


as red as blood, as twice as sweet

by thewinterose



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, BAMF Padmé Amidala, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Darth Vader Redemption, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hades and Persephone-ish, Jedi Padmé Amidala, POV Padmé Amidala, Padmé "oh no he's hot" Amidala, Slow Burn, Suitless Vader, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vader is his own warning, Vader is in love but he's evil so he's dumb, soul mates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-06 17:10:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13415805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewinterose/pseuds/thewinterose
Summary: At the end of the Clone Wars, the entire Jedi Order was eliminated at the hands of the Emperor and his dark apprentice. Well, all but one. Two years later, Padme's past catches up to her in the form of her worse nightmare.Or:The line that separates love and hate has always been blurry.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> New story! So this is my first venture into the Star Wars universe and I am so excited for where this can go. I already have the story mapped out so there's no need to worry about inconsistent updates or just abandoning this project. Anidala is my OTP and I love all the fanfic for it, but I've noticed a severe lack of Jedi!Padme stories. I'm here to fix that. I hope you enjoy and leave constructive criticism if you guys see anything that I could improve. Enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of Space Christine and the Space Phantom begins.

  _"These violent delights have violent ends_

_And in their triumph die,_

_Which as they kiss, consume."_

_\- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet._

 

* * *

 

She knew when it had begun when the first scream rang like a terror in her mind. It was so funny to look back at it then, when the Jedi had been so sure, so _arrogant_ , in assuming that they lived in a galaxy with no threat beyond the political prowess of the Seperatists. They were the bringers of the light, the keepers of balance, and the Force would never forsake them so.

It almost amused her to look back at those last couple months, if only to realize what fools they had been. For most beings in the galaxy, there were no guarantees and no second chances. Not with something as so enigmatic as the Force, and the Jedi were no exception.

Padme was sitting in her bed when it began, lost in the tranquility of a meditative state. She was always rather good at focusing within herself and finding her inner pulsing light, a shining beacon so bright it almost hurt to see it. Her master had never failed to praise her on her natural affinity for meditation. And perhaps it was because of that that she had even managed to survive.

In the Force, she had felt it. The thunder of thousands of marching feet, the sound of Clone Trooper boots pounding off of the walls and into her mind. That had almost broken her concentration then, but she ignored it, determined to remain focused.

And then as if shocked by lightening, Padme had released herself quickly from her meditation. She rolled off of her cot, clutching desperately at her throat, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. She gasped raggedly, nearly tearing at the delicate skin of her neck, an invisible force clogging her throat and mind with a suffocating, terrible darkness. It was so potent that it _stung_.

The light of her soul rebelled and shrunk back at the overwhelming black that wrapped around her body and squeezed. She was dying and she falling, falling, falling down the bleak shaft of her nightmares. _Screams_ echoed in her mind and they wouldn’t stop. She could hear younglings crying out in confused shock, feel their blood running down her tightening throat, suffer the sensation of blaster bolts hitting her back in an unrelenting torrent.

Before she was truly aware of it, Padme had ran to her closet filled her meagre collection of clothes and cloaks and shoved them in a sack she had kept stuffed under her bed. The screaming wouldn’t stop, and Padme wasn’t quite sure if she had been screaming herself with agony, with grief, but her body pushed her on, even while her mind had been so indisposed.

Within seconds Padme was done with shoving credits and her other belongings into her bag, and she ran to clip her lightsaber to her belt. Its weight was comforting against her hip, but in that moment, comfort was not even a passing thought in her mind. She couldn’t think with all the howling voices bouncing around her skull.

Padme hurriedly tied a shorter, light blue colored cloak around her neck and pulled the hood up high over her head. Stealth was not a priority. Dogged instinct and the human will to survive were far more important than anything beyond what made her primal.

Thinking about it now, she almost laughed. She didn’t even bother to hide her force signature.

Bursting out of her room, Padme ran straight towards the hangar bay where she knew her ship would be. The entrance of the Jedi Temple was out of the question. Even half-crazed with panic and grief, Padme could detect that most of the bloodshed had occurred in that area. Every Jedi instinct in her body told her to turn back, to slow down, to help the younglings. But that was never an option, not even then. There was no use saving what was already dead.

She was almost to her intended destination when she heard yelling behind her. Bellows of anger intertwining with shrieks of desperate fear.

She forced herself to run faster, disregarding the burning sensation in her lungs and the ache of her sides. She knew she was going to be seen, there would be no avoiding that. She would just have to survive it.

And then she felt it. If she thought that the darkness was suffocating before, it had _smothered_ her now. The light in her soul shrunk back at the potency of it.

Padme didn’t allow herself to turn back, to glimpse at the source of her future torment. She wouldn’t risk glancing back only to die seconds later. And make no mistake, the darkness _would_ kill her.

“Stop her,” a deep voice commanded in the background, barely above a whisper, and yet the sheer power radiating from it had made Padme shiver with fear. It seemed almost inhuman in the seamless way that it made everything in comparison to it seem so weak, so fragile. Padme had trained for years under the Jedi. She had spent grueling hours meditating, fighting, and honing in on her power to keep it firmly in the light. And yet with one sentence, with two syllables, she had known that she was nothing compared to this creature.

Blaster fire rained down from above and from behind her, and in a quick, graceful flourish of movement, Padme unclipped her saber and ignited it, her back bathed in a glow of seraphic golden light. She twirled her weapon behind her, deflecting the deadly bolts with a practiced and careful precision. All the while running swiftly towards the hangar.

The stifling darkness was creeping closer, black flames licking at her heels, but hope shined like a beacon in the distance. She saw the sleek, silver lines of her ship as she hurriedly approached the bay. Her Naboo Starfighter, a gift from her master when she became a Knight not two months ago, seemed so precious then, like another breath of life.

Clone Troopers were still chasing after her, along with the bringer of the death she felt so keenly in the Force.

When she came upon her ship, she waved her hand frantically, opening the doors with a pulse of energy emitting from her trembling fingers.

Padme picked up speed and barreled into the ship, closing the doors behind her in a panic. Adrenaline coursed through her veins thickly, shielding her from the ache of her acidic lungs and burning feet.

She threw herself into the pilot’s chair and frantically pressed at the random colored buttons on her dashboard. She was being controlled by muscle memory now, no thought in her mind spent on anything more than the simple human instinct to _not fucking die._

The ship began to lift off and Padme felt blaster bolts rain down on her ship. Panic gripped her, and she reached out to the Force, forming a shield around the Starfighter.

The ship began to fly, and Padme pushed it to go at its fastest speed. She was approaching the Coruscant streets then and soaring off higher as the seconds passed.

But then a lingering thought, finally pushing past her muddled panic, told her to look back, to see what she would never see again. So she did.

Padme glanced back at the desolated temple, blood-soaked and riddled with corpses. Her heart stilled in her chest, grief consuming her once again. It had been her home for _sixteen_ years, filled with memories of friends and her master, a man who was stern but kind, and not much older than she. Now it was nothing more than an empty, hulking structure. Saturated with pain and crawling with ghosts.

Below it though, she finally saw it, the figure of that choking darkness. It was cloaked in black, from head to toe, and Padme couldn’t catch a glimpse of a face. It wore a hood, but there was nothing beneath it.

Suddenly then, as if sensing her stare, the creature glanced up sharply, the red glow of it’s lightsaber illuminating it’s movements. It seemed to make eye contact with her, despite the fact that there were spaces between them now.

Her heart stilled in her chest, the savage beat of her organ frozen over with terror. It felt as if it could see through her, it’s presence so encompassing that it defied the distance that stretched between them.

The exchange lasted for moments more before Padme turned away heatedly, anger churning like lava in her gut, hot and burning. It was a monster, a _beast_ , and she hated it with something beyond what pallid feelings of outrage the Jedi were allowed.

That creature murdered her people! Her family! And they were all left to ruin.

Padme turned back to her chair and sat down, launching her ship into hyperspace. The screaming in her head was gone, but she found no comfort in it. It was only the confirmation of their collective extinction.

Padme gasped suddenly, a hesitant but hopeful idea taking root in her mind. Through the Force she reached out slowly, stealthily so as not to draw attention to her master. Her golden presence stretched along his own, trying to seek the comforting warmth of his light. Her master had not been in the temple, perhaps, like her, he was able to escape in time.

Padme crawled toward where his signature would be and stopped short, an agonized whine slipping past her parted lips. She bit down on them in frustration and tried again, harder this time, unable to accept the impending truth. Her light reached out feeling for his, for any hint of his energy, and once again she touched nothing. There was a black hole where he should’ve been, a gaping pit in the Force. Padme sucked in a ragged breath. He was gone. He was truly gone. They all were. She was the only one left.

And with a grief-stricken wail, Padme reached out her hands and clawed down the sides of her soft cheeks, red rivulets of blood running down the spaces her nails left behind.

The ship teetered dangerously, her emotions causing the Force surrounding her to rock the objects nearby.

They had taken everything from her. Her home, her family, and her master, all gone, nothing but their bleeding corpses left behind to stain the dirt.

That monster of darkness had stormed into her life and ripped it from its roots, leaving a wasteland where there was once a garden.

Padme stood from her chair and walked shakily towards the bunk located at the end of her small ship. She collapsed into the cot and curled into a fetal position, her shoulders trembling from the force of her impending sobs.

She was all alone, the last of her kind, and with nowhere to go.

 

 


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been two years since she saw him last. Space Christine now finds herself in a desperate situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've changed the tenses of the story to present tense because I wanted to make it clear that this chapter is now in the present. In the last chapter, I made it seem as if Padme was remembering the events and the downfall of the Jedi, so that explains the narrative change. I've also changed the ages of the characters. I did this for plot purposes, since I actually do genuinely like the age difference between Padme and Anakin, but I brought them a little closer in age here for character choices, not because of any actual dislike I have. I hope you enjoy and leave feedback! I will list the ages at the end notes.

_“Angry people are not always wise.”_

_― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice_

 

* * *

 

 

Padme spends the next two years hopping from planet to planet, system to system, looking for some hovel to hide in. She’s constantly paranoid now. Every look is one of meaning; every new person, whether it’s a child or an elderly slave, is now an informant to the Empire.   

Intellectually, she knows that she’s being ridiculous. Most people walking on the street won’t see her as anything beyond just another traveler passing by. But Padme is no longer a rational creature. She’s a girl made of fear and regret, and she has neither the time nor the energy to change that.

Her life is now comprised of hiding and terror, and what makes it worse is that she now has a name to put to the figure who had nearly killed her that fateful day.

Vader. Darth Vader. He was a Sith Lord who trained for years under Palpatine and no one knew. For years, as the politician worked alongside and even gotten along with the Jedi Masters, he was planning for their demise. And all the while he was grooming his perfect little harbinger of death. They were all pawns and he played them all masterfully, herself, Yoda, Mace Windu. Even Vader was a pawn in his own way.

The thought makes her want to cry so she laughs instead. She finds it easier to do that now. In its own sick way, it takes the pain away and leaves her feeling nothing at all.

A beeping sound to her left breaks Padme out of her destructive reverie and she glances over at the controls of her ship. She almost chuckles at what she sees. She’s running out of fuel in Empire run space. Of course she is. Where else would this happen to her?

Padme sighs in forced calm and reaches out to the Force, centering herself as she inhales and exhales slowly. She feels the urge to meditate but she buries it. She has no time to play Jedi right now. Not when her ship’s fuel tank is emptying gallon by gallon as the seconds pass.

Padme switches off the heater, space has always been too cool for her, and looks to the Force to figure out where she is right now. Due to the fact that she’s barely stayed two days in a single planet over the last two years, she hasn’t formed the habit of remembering the star systems she's taken refuge in.

Within seconds she finds her answer. She’s nearby Corellia. Of course she is. Padme clenches her jaw in frustration but proceeds to lower her ship into the planet’s atmosphere.

Corellia is as corrupt as corrupt can be. From when she was a Padawan with her master, she heard horror stories of how quickly someone from Corellia could sell out a family member for a sack of credits or a gram of spice. The act of even landing here puts her at a huge risk, but Padme doesn’t have time to be hesitant. It’s either she gets stranded in space or she gets fuel and possibly caught. Like always, she finds herself without any desirable options, so she takes the practical one.

She’s too much of a survivalist now to become a victim of pirates or prideful starvation.

Right as her ship truly starts to slow down from a lack of fuel, she’s already parking it in a hanger bay she located. She opens the door to her ship and grabs the blue cloak hanging off of the co-pilot’s chair, wrapping it at her throat as she walks down the gang way of the _Starfighter_. She pulls the hood high over her head and pats at her side, feeling for the comfortable weight of her saber. She cherishes her weapon more than food these days.

Even with the hood covering her face, Padme could feel the eyes of the other men in the bay staring at her with obvious interest. The rising panic in her chest makes her want to run from their heavy gazes, but rationally she knows why they’re looking at her. Smugglers have always been, in her experience, rather flirtatious and cheeky, and Padme has no modest illusions of her beauty.

She’s attractive, and she knows it. She’s always been pretty and she has never tried to deny that fact on the account of false modesty and humility. In her mind, there has never been a point in refuting what was apparent to her.

One of the men, a smuggler by the looks of it, whistles as she passes by, and Padme fights not to roll her eyes. Instead, she glances over and smiles slightly at him, wary of his sharp eyes and predatory smile. She musters up her courage and turns away after a few seconds, not too quickly as to draw suspicion, but fast enough to betray her disinterest.

She strides out onto the streets and finds herself in a market place. It’s rather crowded, but it's quaint, and Padme finds herself enjoying the bustle and chatter. She’s reminded of her days at the temple, where she would run to the gardens with Aayla after their lessons and practice their Force manipulation amongst the talk of the younglings that would play nearby. The thought is bittersweet and tears nearly spring to her eyes at the image of her old friend, but she pushes the sorrow away and focuses on serenity.

Padme shakes her head slightly to clear her mind, and is startled at the feel of someone ramming into her. She instinctually looks up to meet the gaze of the smuggler who whistled at her earlier.

His eyes are dark brown and just as predatory as before, but Padme has to admit that she finds him handsome in a rugged sort of way. Even still, something about the way he stares at her makes her hackles raise. She puts up her defenses and smiles at him radiantly. She has found, as humiliating as it is, that the best way to deal with men like this is to talk very little and smile very prettily. By one way or the other they'll distract themselves with their voice or her face and she can sneak away before they even notice her absence. 

“You’re rather beautiful to be walking out here by yourself. I saw your ship. She’s a beauty. Much like her owner,” the smuggler says suavely, resting his hand on the soft curve of Padme’s shoulder. Padme only smiles wider and resists the urge to shake his hand off of her.

Back then, her master had always shooed off men like him, and due to the fact that Padme was a Jedi, she was inexperienced in the intimacies that took place between men and women. Fortunately though, she was adept in talking circles around arrogant men with brains too small to fill a cup.

“Well I don’t know about that,” Padme says, brushing a curly lock behind her ear in a false show of bashfulness.

The man positively grins at her doe-eyed maiden façade, and leans in even closer. His lack of impressive height makes his face near level with hers, and to her annoyance and uneasiness, he doesn’t even bother to hide his attempt to ogle at her breasts.

As the seconds pass, Padme finds herself eager to leave this strange man with his hungry eyes, but she can’t think of enough casual excuses to leave his presence without causing suspicion.

Instead she presses herself to him rather artlessly, unused to the delicacy of seduction, but from the way his pupils widen, she thinks her attempt is at least somewhat successful.

She lowers her eyes as if hesitant, and internally, she just feels ridiculous. Her negotiations on behalf of the Jedi Council with her master had never been so crass.

“I’ve run out of fuel and I had to land here. Can you tell me where to buy some?” Padme whispers slowly, batting her eyes like a love-stricken teenager. Force, she’s twenty one years old! She hasn’t acted this juvenile in ages. Or ever, really. 

The smuggler nods quickly and wraps an arm around her waist, and Padme nearly shivers with revulsion. His lips brush her ear as he murmurs back, “I do. What will you give me for it?”

Padme looks up at him in confusion. What will she give him? Why would she give him anything for directions?

Her eyes must betray her genuine confusion because the smuggler pulls her in even closer and chuckles hotly against her ear. “How about your mouth wrapped around my cock?”

Padme rears her head back in disgust, unused to such foul language. Being a Jedi had afforded her the privilege of not being exposed to such carnal attentions, and she suspected that her master saved her from quite a bit of that as well.

“Excuse you!” Padme exclaims, moving hurriedly out of his embrace. The hand resting above her hip drags down to her leg in an attempt to keep her by his side, but Padme is too quick for him to subdue. She pushes him farther and stalks away from him, disappointed at the lack of help and disgusted that she even allowed herself to touch that man for so long.

She doesn’t turn back to look at him, and she finds herself irritated by her burning cheeks. She is a grown woman for crying out loud! And here she is, blushing, just because a man said something crass to her.

She inhales and exhales slowly, reaching out to the Force to find her inner peace once again. For some reason, she can’t shake her feelings of unease, so she hastens her pace, unwilling to spend longer than necessary on this planet.

Towards the end of the marketplace, she spots a ship parts vendor and walks resolutely towards him. She doesn’t have many credits in her pack, but she’s prepared to haggle if necessary. She had seen her master do it enough times to have a basic grasp on the exchange.

When she approaches his stand, she appraises the individual sitting behind the counter. He was an older human man with grizzled features and beady, black eyes. He seemed like the kind of person that would bargain some poor fool out of their kidney if he could manage it, but Padme shoves away her judgmental musings, ashamed at her shallowness.

“Hello, sir” Padme greets cheerfully, folding her hands demurely in front of her. She finds that men usually prefer to engage with women who behave in a gentler manner, and Padme has no desire to extend her venture on Corellia longer than necessary by being difficult. She’d rather swallow her pride and get on with her day safely than risk being caught because she upset some grumpy old man.

The man peers over his holoscreen at her, his beady eyes narrowed in obvious irritation. Padme continues to smile at him.

“What do you want?” He barks, and she has no illusions as to why his stand is so empty in the middle of a crowded market, but she persists in her courtesy.

“I’m looking to buy some ship fuel. Enough to get me through the next month, if possible.”

The vendor raises his brow in obvious interest, slowly placing his holo down on the stand. Padme attempts not to fidget under his heavy gaze.

“A month, you say?” He asks, a smile curling at his lips. “What kind of ship do you have?”

Padme smiles in genuine pride. “A Naboo Starfighter.”

The vendor’s grin widens further, his parted lips showcasing a rather impressive display of yellowed teeth. Padme resists the urge to look away in disgust. As the seconds pass, she finds her distaste for Corellia growing beyond her preconceived notions of corruption and verging more on to include the people who reside in it. Everyone here is so rude. It nearly drives her crazy. As a Jedi, she was always treated with a certain amount of respect and reverence, even more so as a diplomat in Republican planets. Now she is spat on and condescended to. Suffice to say, she’s not exactly used to it. However, she was taught to have compassion and respect for all creatures, so she reminds herself of that and lets it override her frustration.

“That will be 300 credits.”

Padme starts at the high price. She doesn’t even have _100_!

“That’s thievery!” She exclaims, her composure broken by his discourtesy.

“Fancy ship for a fancy lady. Maybe next time try not to own such an expensive ship,” the vendor sneers, his beady eyes roving languidly down her lithe form, eyeing her clothing.

Padme glances down at herself and eyes her blue Jedi robes. The tunic is fitted around her waist and the hem reaches the tops of her calves, where a long diagonal slit reveals the dusty grey pants she wears beneath it, and around her shoulders she wears her cloak. It’s practical but stylish and not exactly sumptuous, despite what the curmudgeon seems to think.

Padme sighs and plants her fists on her hips, her right hand resting above where her lightsaber is hidden. The man obviously doesn’t respond to courtesy, so she’ll try a different tactic.

She leans forward and slams her palm down loudly next to his holo, her delicate features turning severe, her chocolate curls forming a curtain around her face.

“Look, I need the fuel. I don’t have time to waste bargaining and arguing with a man like you when I could be off at the next star system. I bet I’m the only person who has bothered to give you any business today, so let’s be mutually beneficial towards each other. I’ll give you fifty credits for a month’s worth of fuel,” Padme says, her words clipped and business like. She finds herself unused to the tactlessness of such a bargain, and yet, she feels strangely exhilarated by it. When acting as a diplomat for the Council, she often found herself surrounded by pretty words and empty promises, so the act of complete and brutal honesty is a rather new one for her.

Now it’s the vendor who squawks in outrage. “Fifty credits for a month’s worth of fuel? Now that’s thievery, young lady! Seventy for three weeks!”

“Sixty for a month.”

“Sixty for three weeks.”

“Forty for three weeks.”

“Fifty!”

“Forty, and if you keep going, I’ll drop it even lower.”

The vendor growls in unmistakable frustration before turning around swiftly, grumbling profanities under his breath.

Padme feels happiness soar in her heart at the victory and resists the urge to start wiggling her hips in a dance like a fool. Instead, she merely grins and grabs at the barrel he gives her with a polite thank you and a farewell.

The barrel is heavy and her arms strain with the effort to hold it, but she’s relieved that her time on this planet is done.

She’s nearly to her ship when she feels something settle over the air, an ominous cloud that hangs over her head. Padme nearly drops her barrel, but she tightens her grip over the object and feels for the Force.

Almost immediately the Light answers her and whispers urgent warnings to its last acolyte. _Run, run, run!_ It screams to her, and Padme’s eyes widen with fear as she feels that presence again.

For as long as she lives, she’ll never forget it. That dark and suffocating cloud that wrapped around her throat and demanded her submission. Lord Vader. The Sith.

She sees a sleek, large black ship lowering from the horizon.

Vader is here.

She runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Padme- 21  
> Vader-23  
> Obi-Wan-32
> 
> Also since Darth Vader is basically the galactic equivalent of Erik from Phantom of the Opera, I have decided that I will refer to him as such in the chapter descriptions. Padme also has some nice parallels with Christine, so naturally, she will be referred to as Christine. Obi-Wan doesn't have many similarities with Raoul but for the sake of consistency, he will be Raoul. I'm doing this for many reasons. All of them being because it amuses me. 
> 
> If the link for Padme's outfit doesn't load for some reason just know that it's Daenerys' famous blue dress from season 3.  
> [Padm's blue robes](https://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F736x%2F5e%2F7e%2F88%2F5e7e887fea1d28c06bd26945ff6a1b1e--movie-costumes-cosplay-costumes.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fachouler%2Fdani%2F&docid=0tP8l4H8pqwIFM&tbnid=KPEiNpv62FBIbM%3A&vet=1&w=736&h=933&hl=en-us&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim)


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Space Christine finally comes face to face with the Space Phantom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit this was a lot. Anyway, I was excited about this chapter and I hope you all will be too. Enjoy and leave feedback! Btw I also listened to "Rewrite the Stars" from the Greatest Showman a lot while writing this so I recommend that you do too. Not that it has a lot to do with the chapter. It's just a great song.

_“By the pricking of my thumbs,_

_Something wicked this way comes.”_

_― William Shakespeare, Macbeth_

 

* * *

 

 

There are very few things an individual feels when near the cusp of death. When the fear that floods their body is so intense and all-encompassing that there is no distinct line between rational thought and simple human instinct.

Padme has only gone through this sensation once before, and even now, the memory of dread and the vague recollection of horror has not truly left her subconscious. It is in every eye that looks into her own for just a moment too long; a second too extended to be simply that of two individuals that catch a passing glimpse of one another.

Before, she would chalk up those shocks of terror she felt to paranoia, to that of an individual who has not recovered from a traumatic experience and most likely never will. Once again she thinks of her master. He had always told her to trust the Force and her instincts, and Padme has once again, and perhaps for not the last time, failed to heed his wisdom.

The ship above her is lowering with every passing second, and the fear she once felt has returned with a cruel vengeance. She has never seen Vader, not truly. The one experience she had when she looked out the window that fateful day two years ago was not a close enough encounter for it to count as anything substantial. All the same though, she’ll never forget his presence: dark and smothering and saturated with raw power. It makes her tremble to even think about it.

The barrel in her arms is slipping, and Padme has half a mind to drop it entirely, but she won’t allow herself to do so. The fuel in her grip is the only thing she has at a chance to escape and she can’t abandon sense for cowardice, no matter how tempting it may be to do so.

She’s nearly to the hangar bay as the ship is minutes away from landing. Padme sprints to her _Starfighter_ and wrestles the barrel to the other side of the ship where the fuel compartment is. She throws the latch open and hurriedly sloshes the liquid inside, nearly gagging at its overwhelming scent. She exhales through her mouth and forces herself to push through.

She feels the ship land. Or rather, not the ship but the monster inside, and Padme doesn’t have the logical capacity right now to question as to why she can sense his presence so acutely when she has only sensed him once before.

His lumbering, powerful steps echo inside of her head as she finishes filling up her tank, and the anxiety that eats away at her is nausea inducing. A large part of her wishes that this was a dream, that she wasn’t on the verge of death and torture and a million other things that Palpatine or Vader could imagine on their most sadistic days. But she was. She is; and there’s no hope in yearning for happier circumstances when Padme hasn’t felt something as simple as unfettered joy in years. Her days are bogged down by Vader’s voice, and Palpatine’s rule, and the constant reminder of her impending mortality.

One day she will die by his hand. There is no other alternative. Yet despite that, Padme will resist that possibility for as long as she is humanly able.

Padme is running back into her ship when she hears it:the sound of Stormtrooper boots thud in perfect unison behind her, and Padme could hear shocked gasps echo from the bystanders in the surrounding area. She almost feels bad for a moment. Someone will have to mop up her blood- clean up her intestines if it gets that violent- and since its Vader, it most certainly will be.

“Stand down, Jedi! We know it’s you,” a mechanically modulated voice commands from behind one of the white, expressionless helmets. Padme wonders if he was a clone trooper.

She had fought beside clone troopers once, a thousand years ago.

Padme steps back slowly from the gang way of her ship and raises her hands cautiously, her back facing the squad behind her.

 _Vader should be here,_ she thinks fitfully, shivering in terror _. Why isn’t he here?_

“Turn around!” The voice commands again, and Padme does so warily, her eyes madly scanning at her surroundings, frantically reaching out to the Force with her mind, determined to feel the darkly saturated aura of the Sith.

She gains some composure. “Where is your commander?” She asks, ignoring how plainly her voice shakes. She looks to the men in front of her. A desperate and childish part of her seeks comfort and reassurance.

It’s ridiculous, she knows. These soldiers are her enemies. They fight for the man who single-handedly destroyed her entire order. Padme should not be looking to them, even subconsciously, for empathy. And it doesn’t truly matter anyway. She finds no visible humanity in their helmets.

One of the Stormtroopers, presumably the leader of the squad, stalks up and roughly takes hold of Padme’s upper arm. He abruptly jerks her forward, and she winces at the hostile strength of his grip.

She can sense it then. This man hates her. It’s as clear in the Force as it is in his actions, and Padme knows that her moment for mercy and patience is done. These men will not honor it for her, and for the sake of her survival, she will do no such thing for them.

In a quick series of moments, most of which are aided by the Force, Padme twists herself out of the Trooper’s grasp and swings out her left hand, her palm pulsing with unchecked energy.

The trooper flies though the air, thrown backwards by the intensity of her power. He falls against a stand and lies there, his head drooping, unconscious and unresponsive.

His brothers look at her for a few moments, perhaps in shock and awe, before they raise their blasters and fire at her still form.

Padme whips out her saber and ignites it within seconds, dodging and bouncing their bolts off with the golden plasma of her lightsaber.

There are too many of them, and she cannot fight them on her own, no matter how well-trained she is, and as of right now she has no chance on getting back on her ship. The best chance she has at survival is to flee and hide until they leave the area.

Padme takes a deep breath, raising her saber and twirling it with a flourish, deflecting the blaster fire that aims to kill her. In this she is unafraid. She has become quite used to being shot at.

She sighs and turns tail, sprinting in the opposite direction. She heads into the market place, reluctant to let any innocent bystanders get hurt, but at the same time faced with no other option but to simply hope that the troopers will be cautious against citizen casualties. Knowing how the Empire works, however, Padme doubts that is the case.

 _A Jedi would never allow innocents to get hurt for the sake of self-preservation,_ a voice in her mind speaks, sounding suspiciously like her deceased master, but Padme ignores it. _I have no choice,_ she thinks back furiously, desperately, her eyes stinging with compassion and despair, but she has no choice. She’s never had a choice.

From behind her retreating form, Padme hears a cacophony of enraged commands, terrified screams, and stomping boots. The guilt rises once again and mixes with her blinding fear, creating a confusing mess of debilitating emotions within her. _There is no passion, there is serenity_ , Padme thinks, reaching for the comfort and security that the fluttering light within her never fails to provide. 

 _It is a gift to be so naturally in tune with the Light,_ her master used to say.

She calms slightly, focusing more, but her terror and anger and indecision overpower rational thought. In moments like this, Padme is less of the Jedi that her master taught her to be and is more like the human being that she tries to pretend that she isn’t. 

_Afraid. A coward._

In front of her, Padme spots the rotten ship parts vendor hiding behind the rickety wood of his stand. His beady eyes are wide over the counter, and Padme can see how fitfully he shakes.

“Run!” She cries to him, waving her saber in his direction. He remains still, his feet frozen to the dirty and dusty ground beneath him. An overwhelming sense of pity and empathy flood Padme’s heart, and with a flourish of her hand, the vendor flies away from the blaster bolts that would have hit him.

He lands to the left of his ruined stand and Padme looks at him again. “Run! Get out!” She screams.

The vendor finally seems to process her words, and with a surprising amount of speed that would not normally be possible for someone his age, the man runs down an empty street, not glancing back once.

Relieved that she prevented an unjust casualty, Padme turns to measure her surroundings. She is at the end of the marketplace, and in the distance she can hear the shouts of panic and fury that come from the troopers that search for her.

She has time to form a plan, at the very least.

Even still, though, something lingers at the back of her mind. A half-finished, undeveloped thought that bounces around in the recesses of her tired and terror-rocked mind.

_Where is Vader?_

He should have been here by now. Or have fought her, or killed her, or _something._ She’s heard tales of his ruthlessness and cruel efficiency. Vader didn't seem like the type of man- _monster!_ she injects quickly- to lie around and play a game of cat and mouse.

Or perhaps he was. After all, his absence seems to frighten her more than his actual presence. 

The thudding of boots sounds around the corner and Padme runs into an alley way on her right side. It’s thin and she has to turn off her saber to squeeze through, but she knows with an undying certainty that a whole legion of troopers can’t chase her through here. At least not with all the bulky white armor they wear.

For a moment, Padme allows herself to relax.

Quickly she turns a corner and skids to a stop. 

_That Force-signature..._

She doesn't know how she knows it so acutely, so instinctually, even after this long. But she does. She does.

And she was wrong. She was so very wrong when she thought that the monster’s absence was more terrifying than his presence because it wasn’t. It isn’t.

The air around her cools, causing chills to race with a fury down her spine. She runs again, desperate to leave that choking presence and arrives into a slightly more open area.

Walls surround her on all sides, and Padme looks around frantically, searching for an escape, an open, an _anything_ because he’s here.

_He’sherehe’sherehe’shere!_

She just doesn’t know where he is.

She takes a deep breath and forces herself to calm, igniting her saber as she breathes. She can feel his stifling aura coming closer, a serpent wrapping around her throat and squeezing tighter, tighter, tighter.

For a moment, Padme is not sure whether he is actually choking her or if it’s just the darkness that surrounds him. She almost doesn’t want to find out.

In the corner of her eye, at the opening of the alley, she sees the blood red crackle of a lightsaber. Padme twists around artlessly, panic making her sloppy.

Her heart thumps a constant staccato drum beat and it won’t slow down. The rampant speed of it against her chest almost hurts, and she resists the urge to rub at the smarting area.

Instead, she raises her saber higher and steadies herself.

Finally, finally, he steps out.

For a moment, Padme takes a second to truly _look_ at Vader, the monster who haunted her every step and killed her in every nightmare.

He was tall, uncommonly so, and broad in frame. From head to toe, he was draped in stark black Sith robes, covering every part of his body.

It was almost jarring to see that he exposed no part of himself, closed off in every way imaginable. As if he was hiding behind himself.

A small part of her wonders why, but she shoves it away, hissing at the side of herself that even tries to question this beast’s reason for anything.

He is a monster, a devil, some Force-forsaken soulless creature, and he has nothing inside him. It’s ridiculous to even question the contrary. To assume that he has reasons for even _breathing_ beyond the biological necessity of it. 

 _If_ he is organic, that is.

Padme looks up at him, the height difference between them considerable to say the least, and is unsurprised to see that he wears a hood over his face.

It doesn’t completely cover his features, and as light hits certain parts of him, she can see flashes of _something_ \- skin maybe?- but he moves away every time it does.

Vader seems to be making a conscious effort not to expose his face, but Padme finds his attempts pointless. It wouldn’t matter what he looked like. He was nothing but a soulless monster.

Vader appraises her for seconds longer than she does, his head visibly moving up and down as he eyes her. The air changes a bit when he does, as if some new tangible feeling stretches between them, but it is elusive and fleeting. Padme can’t catch it.

They continue to circle around each other and she grows more agitated as the moment stretches. Shouldn’t he be trying to kill her already?

Finally he speaks, and his voice is still as deep and powerful as she remembers it being. It sounds masculine to her, surprisingly, and not robotic as some claimed it to be. He must be some humanoid of some sort, or at the very least organic, but that line of questioning humanizes him a bit too much in her mind so Padme dismisses it.

“So you’re the slip of the Jedi that escaped me?” He drawls, twisting his saber slowly in his grip. Padme’s eyes follow the movement, petrified.

It’s quiet for a few moments before she realizes he’s expecting a response. She scrambles quickly for something that sounds confident and aloof, but her mind supplies nothing but monosyllabic, shaky replies.

“Yes,” she answers, her voice wavering slightly. Her heart is pounding a mile a minute and a large side of her wants to scream, _“just kill me already!”_

However, she wisely keeps her silence.

“You’re afraid,” Vader remarks, his tone would almost sound tender if not for the palpable hint of condescension that underlies it.

 _He’s enjoying this_ , she realizes. He likes to see her cowering and impatient before him. Padme inwardly snarls and steels her expression, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing her terror.

“And you’re stalling,” she quips, uncharacteristically brazen. “Shouldn’t I be dead by now?”

The air surrounding them tenses and that strange, unnamed feeling between them flutters away as his agitation grows.

It seems as if Vader doesn’t like being teased. Padme would continue, of course, if her life was not on the line.

“You’re a fool! How suicidal do you have to be to talk to me this way!” He snarls, his tone animalistic. From beneath his hood, Padme sees a flash of white. His teeth perhaps?

“And yet here I stand. For years I have been dreaming about this. I've been running from you and hiding in every corner of the galaxy and now that you’re here, you do nothing. Your reputation must be exaggerated,” Padme says, watching as Vader’s chest rises with fury, the darkness emanating from him starting to smother the area between them.

“You want to die, girl? You want to join your insignificant little Order into the nothingness they occupy? I assure you, the Empire will celebrate your death. Me most of all.”

“Then do it!” Padme shrieks and then lunges forward, her saber raised to strike.

A flash of red appears in front of her, quick as lighting, and Padme’s arm shakes with effort as Vader’s weapon meets her own. She sees a glint of white again, turned crimson by the glow of the blade, and knows that she amused him with her attack. His apparent enjoyment only incenses her more.

From within, she draws on that never ending well of light and power, and allows it flow through her body. Padme’s veins thrum with the Force, and with an outstretched palm, she shoves the man aside, leaping away from him.

She turns back around, twirling her saber, a warrior’s cry escaping her parted lips.

Vader sprints to her, aggressively slashing his plasma blade at her.

The darkness envelops him now, just as light surrounds her, and in a distant part of her mind, she marvels at the grey in between.

His saber meets hers again, but Padme is prepared for his strength this time, her arm only hurting slightly as she pushes against him.

Vader is massive; taller and broader than the average man, and Padme has always been rather petite for her age. She’s athletic, sure, and a skilled fighter, but her strength has never been brute force. She’s quick and agile, and although Vader is big, it seems that he is too.

It becomes apparent that he’s a much better fighter than she is. Or at the very least, has practiced much more than she has.

Padme’s arm strain with the effort to hold him back, so she moves her lightsaber, hissing as the crackle of Vader’s own burns the skin of her arm. She twists away from him and peers around frantically, looking for a way out. If she’s quick enough, then perhaps she can outrun him.

Vader senses her panic and laughs, the sound sending chills throughout her body.

“You asked for a fight, little one. Don’t tell me you’re afraid now!” He jeers, mockingly twirling his crimson saber in his hand. It’s large and too close to where she stands. She can feel the heat of skim across her face.

She ignores the anger that rises within her at his comment and the strange nickname, and comes at him again.

Vader anticipates her attack and crouches low, prepared to strike, but with a barely audible snort, she tricks him.

She runs at him, using the Force to elevate her slightly, and grabs ahold of his shoulder. It’s strong and muscular beneath her grip, and through his thick robes Padme can feel the heat of his body on her hand. She ignores the sensation that passes through their touch.

She flips over his large form and darts into the alley way, sprinting to freedom.

Behind her, Vader growls with frustration and turns after her, his steps loud and jarring compared to her swift feet.

_Must not very good at stealth then. He's too big._

Padme is nearly to the end of the alley when she can feel him start to catch up to her.

She can sense his presence, just a few paces from her, and she quickens her frantic haste.

Truthfully, she has no plan as to what she’s going to do when she reaches the end of the alley, but so far she’s been successfully winging it and she supposes that continuing to do so would be more beneficial than standing around and thinking up a new tactic.

Suddenly, just as she runs out into open space, Vader reaches out and yanks her hard back onto his chest.

Panic floods her veins and Padme stretches out her searching hands, wiggling furiously against him, and growling with the effort to escape his iron hold.

She feels puffs of breath move past her ear as Vader chuckles with cruel amusement behind her. The sensation is wholly frightening and unpleasant.

She tries to physically reach out to the Force, but Vader must sense her attempt, because he wraps an arm around her lithe form and squeezes her to the point of pain.

Positioned like this, she can feel every twitch of his body; every inhale and exhale he takes as he breathes behind her.

In the Force, Padme can sense Vader reach out and freeze her in order to still her frantic movements. She whimpers as her limbs stop moving at her discretion.

It’s a strange and terrifying feeling, to not be in control of one’s own body. She is completely under his command now.

Vader laughs, a deep, gravely chuckle that rumbles from within his chest and outward into her own. Padme finds that strange too.

“You must be wondering how we found you, Jedi,” he says behind her, his voice so low it's practically a whisper. Padme shivers in fear and revulsion.

 _Too close,_ she thinks _. He's too close._

A sharp nudge prods at her mind and Padme pushes back at it, locking her mental shields in place. Vader audibly growls against the curls of her hair and prods again, harder this time, searching for something. She grits her teeth and thrusts though an opening, trailing along the shutters of his mind.

Vader feels her and shoves at her light, his darkness recoiling at the beacon that dares to enter its haven. “Get out of my head,” he growls.

“Get out of mine,” she grits back, and after a few seconds of them poking at each other’s mental shields, they both back off, wary and irritated.

The tension stretches between them once more; fledgling and small, barely there, but it whispers something urgent. Both of the Force-users ignore the sound.

“You must be wondering how we found you,” he says, his tone annoyingly arrogant. 

Padme is curious, of course, but she stays silent, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing her interest.

Vader sees her prideful countenance and chuckles cruelly once again. His grip around her tightens.

The whispers get louder.

With his free hand, the Sith Lord gestures to the side, and around them, stormtroopers start to file in.

Padme’s panic starts anew, but her Force-frozen body leaves her unable to express it. Her muscles scream to move, to run, but she can’t. The monster won’t let her.

“A smuggler saw you earlier,” Vader begins, his tone conversational. Her eyes widen with realization, rage flooding her body in a fiery tempest.

_That jackass._

“Apparently you both had a _nice_ chat, but of course, as fate would have it, he discovered your identity and reported it to the Imperial military police, as a loyal subject should.”

Padme could hear the sneer in his voice, but she ignored it in favor of the wrath that swirled within her.

How could she be so stupid? Two years of living in hiding and a _smuggler_ exposes her? If she weren’t so upset, she might have marveled at how ridiculous it was.

Vader turns to the legion of troopers in front of them. “Bring him out,” he commands.

The line of soldiers part down the middle and a lone, rugged looking man strides past, a stormtrooper walking closely behind him. A flare of indignation rises within her as she spots his wide smirk. “Hey, babe.”

“ _You-!”_ Padme growls, aching to run to him. To claw at his handsome face. To draw blood.

“Shh,” Vader coos against her hair, his chest puffing with amusement. He shifts his gaze to the smuggler, who pales significantly under his hooded stare. “Tell me your name.”

The smuggler starts at the order, his fingers trembling with fear. Although she would never admit it, Padme feels a spark of dark satisfaction at his obvious terror.

“Jae, Lord Vader,” he utters.

Vader nods, the hair at Padme’s temple shifting when he does. “Do you have any words for the Jedi?” He asks expectantly.

The smuggler-  _Jae_ , her mind supplies- glances back over at her and grins widely. His gaze drags slowly down her body, his eyes once again lingering on her exposed cleavage. He looks back up at her, a lazy smirk curling at the edges of his mouth.

“You should have fucked me when you had the chance, you Jedi whore. I recognized your tits from the promos you did during the Clone Wars,” Jae sneers, and Padme visibly flinches in the limited way that she can.

In the twenty-one years that she has lived, no one has ever spoken to her so disrespectfully, and with so little concern of her personal worth. It saddens her in a way that she doesn’t expect.

It’s silent for a few moments, the air tense. Even the urgent whispers cease.

Vader nods and slackens his grip on Padme, allowing her still body to fall from his hold. He keeps one large, gloved hand wrapped around her upper arm and peers down at her.

Again, she cannot see his face, but she catches a glimpse of burning amber. _His eyes_ , she realizes with a jolt. Sith Lords have golden eyes.

The whispers start anew, louder and louder, the pitch becoming a scream. It’s yelling something, and she doesn’t know what, but as it grows, so does the energy that thrums in her veins. Her mind and body seem to sing with something, and she doesn’t know what.

Vader stills, his grip hardening resolutely on her arm as he pulls her closer. He feels it too.

He looks up again and stares down at the awful smuggler. Within her, Padme feels a sadistic pleasure and amusement that she instinctively knows is not her own, but she can’t push it away. With each passing second, the echoing emotion grows stronger and stronger until she is almost convinced that it’s real, but it can’t be. It’s not hers. It’s Vader’s.

The Sith Lord glances down at her once more before returning his gaze to the smuggler.

“You have done well for the Empire,” he states and then reaches up, his hand fisting.

A sickening crunch sounds and the smuggler, Jae, falls to the floor.

Dead.

Padme hears a ragged gasp sound in the still air. She realizes it is her own after a few moments. Horror rises within her at how easily Vader killed a man he barely knew. A man that helped him, really.

The Force-hold on her body loosens slightly, and she swivels her head up, staring into the hood of the man in front of her.

Her mouth opens to say something, question him, _anything_ , but as she does, Vader’s gloved hand falls into her line of sight, forming a motion. “Sleep,” he orders blandly.

Padme’s mouth remains unmoving, her eyes falling closed against her own volition.

And then all goes dark.


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Space Christine wakes up to find herself in a cell and has a strange encounter with the Space Phantom, who seems to have his own reasons for keeping her alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I'm having a great time writing this story! Jedi!Padme is a fun perspective to write from because she's a lot more naive than canon!Padme, at least where men are concerned that is. Vader is also fun to write and I've been thinking about writing a few chapters or scenes from his POV, if only to see what he thinks about everything. Either way, I hope you guys enjoy! Leave feedback if you want! I love reading you guys' comments!

_“Lost in Hell,-Persephone,_

_Take her head upon your knee;_

_Say to her, "My dear, my dear,_

_It is not so dreadful here.”_

_― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems_

 

* * *

 

 

Padme startles awake, her eyes opening and then clenching tightly shut as bright incandescent lightbulbs burn and blur her sight.

After a few moments of letting her eyes adjust to the environment, Padme allows herself to measure her surroundings. Unsurprisingly, she’s in a cell. A rather strange cell in all actuality. There are no bars that lock her in, or any similar cuffs that bind her hands, but instead she’s surrounded on all sides by thick plexiglass. And by the looks of it, Force-resistant plexiglass.

She stands slowly, conscious of her body’s weakness, and walks to the front of her cell. In the corner she spots a camera pointed at her and resists the urge to mockingly wave at it.

The only thing in the cell that’s not made of glass is the steel door that locks her in, and although her holdings should be see-through, she can look at nothing beyond her own reflection. She grimaces slightly, a headache pulsing irritatingly at her temples. She can’t tell if it’s due to frustration at herself for getting captured, or anger at Vader for even kidnapping her in the first place that’s causing it. But then again, that begs the question, which should have been her first thought upon waking anyway: why the hell was she still alive?

Vader spoke in relish about having her killed, about exterminating the Jedi Knight that slipped from his grasp two years ago, and yet the first thing he does upon finding her is capture her. Despite the fighting beforehand, the process of him kidnapping her wasn’t even that violent, not truly. He only knocked her out through a Force-suggestion to _sleep,_ instead of brutally subduing her through brute strength, or dragging her kicking and screaming to his ship.

Padme, for the life of her, cannot understand why Vader acted the way he did. For a man with a reputation for efficiency and severity, the way he behaved in this situation was just outright _bizarre._ Especially since the person he was chasing was a Jedi who belonged to a group of people that Vader was known for despising.

Padme sighs, shaking her head and pressing her palms to her throbbing temples. Ruminating on Vader’s strange habits was only worsening her already aching mind, and in moments like these, Padme always found herself resenting her natural curiosity.

She looks down at herself and sighs again, sliding her hands down her slim waist to dust off the dirt that had gathered on her robes. She bites her lip in irritation. She always hated getting dirty, even as a Padawan. Padme huffs a bittersweet chuckle. _Especially_ as a Padawan. It was a pet peeve that she and her master shared during the Clone Wars when their days of reconnaissance with Captain Cody led to weeks with scant bathing.

The influx of memories of her master’s kind blue eyes only help in saddening Padme, so she shoves them away, turning back to sit on the metal slab Vader was so kind in letting her sleep on.

She looks up to stare at the camera in the corner. It’s programmed to follow her wherever she moves, and Padme briefly wonders at the identity of the poor soul who’s watching her. Strangely, she hopes that they do not hate her, and if they do, she hopes that it is the distant sort of hatred that people have for traitors and villains on holofilms. The kind of disdain that is reserved for individuals no one really knows. They probably do. After all, Padme’s mere existence as a Jedi Knight makes her a traitor to the Empire. Even though the formation of the Empire came as a betrayal to the Republic.

Padme sighs once again, harshly this time. If there’s one thing she learned when working in diplomacy, it was that people had an overabundance of tolerance whenever it came to things that benefitted them. Supporting Palpatine as the Jedi were being purged in the largest genocide in all of galactic history was simply another thing people had to swallow in order to survive. Padme could not begrudge them that. She was intimately familiar with what it took to survive as well.

All the same, Padme waves at the camera and smiles, the action surprisingly free of any sarcasm.

A loud ping echoes in the room suddenly, startling Padme into standing up.

The large steel door in front of her opens to reveal a small squadron of Stormtroopers standing stiffly, their sides facing Padme.

Her brows furrow in confusion for a moment, before understanding finally dawns on her. In the distance, she feels and sees the looming shadow of the infamous Sith Lord approaching her cell.

Terror and a strange sort of apprehension build in Padme’s chest as she watches him stalk closer. Instinctively, she grabs for her saber and finds nothing. She rolls her eyes at her own thoughtlessness. The first thing they would’ve taken from her was her weapon and it was foolish to assume otherwise.

A bizarre buzzing starts in her mind as he approaches and only grows louder with every nearing step he takes. It makes Padme want to slam her hands over her ears, or bash her head against a wall, and yet strangely the sensation is not wholly… unpleasant.

Padme backtracks at her own thought and shoves it away, repressing the strange feeling the way she was taught.

Vader strides into the cell, his hands at hips, fingers tied into his belt loops. Padme looks down and notices that he still has his saber on him. She wonders if he means to kill her now. A part of her wishes that he is, if only to smother the confusion she feels every time he’s near.

Padme attempts to stare up at him confidently, without any trace of fear, but his silent and golden gaze on her features only serves to make her feel uncomfortable the longer it goes on.

She bites her lip, chewing nervously on the soft flesh, and glances away from him, training her eyes on the trooper behind him. His impassive stare is not a much better alternative but Padme finds herself with no better options than to keep looking at him regardless.

Vader scoffs suddenly, and the sound brings Padme’s attention back to him.

He stands straighter, his broad frame imposing and massive compared to her petite form, and Padme is suddenly struck with the thought that if he so desired, he could hold her down and kill her right now. She looks back at the Stormtrooper.

“Why do you keep staring at him? Do you like him?” Vader asks mockingly, crossing his arms over his large chest.

Padme sputters with embarrassment and shock, her cheeks flaming at the strange question. Was he _teasing_ her?

“Excuse me?” She fires back incredulously. In her mind, she goes over poses she could use to seem more intimidating like him, but all she does is wring her fingers and continuously chew a hole through her bottom lip.

Vader says nothing, simply staring at her, but Padme feels echoes of his amusement flood her body. It’s strange how she instinctively knows that the emotion is not hers, but his own.

“You are my prisoner now,” he begins, and Padme waits for the threats to come.

“I have informed the Emperor of your capture, of which he is infinitely pleased, and you will stay with me on this ship and at my lodgings when we return to the Imperial Center. My master has ordered it so. However, if you take _one_ step out of line and choose to betray me, my officers, or this ship, I will kill you ruthlessly and stick your pretty little head on a spike for all the universe to see.”

Padme stares up at him in shock, disbelief rendering her incapable of intellectual thought or speech. She expected to hear when her execution date was, or whether he decided on killing her now simply because he wanted to. She most certainly didn’t anticipate hearing that she was going to _stay_ with him.

Padme sighs shakily, running her fingers through her tangled curls. Through the corner of her eye, she notices Vader’s gaze follow the action.

She takes a moment to collect her thoughts and muddle through the mass of confusion she feels. Why would the Emperor allow her to live? More importantly, why would Vader accept it?

She gazes up at him again, a part of her desperate to see through his hood, if only to meet his eyes, and finds herself only inches from where he stands. He must’ve moved closer when she wasn’t looking.

The buzzing in her head grows louder at his proximity, and she wants so much for him to move away from her. His nearness only serves to confuse and scramble her head more.

Even still she persists in questioning him. “Why? I thought I would’ve been dead by now?”

In front of her Vader hums thoughtfully and brings his hands to rest imposingly at his hips. Padme backs away slightly when the action almost causes his arm to touch the exposed skin of her shoulder.

“Ordinarily, as in your case, traitors are made examples of and exterminated immediately,” Vader pauses a bit, and Padme smothers the horror she feels at the obvious relish in his words. He continues.

“However, since you are a Jedi, a Jedi who escaped the purge no less, my master thought it wise that you be kept alive and out of the public eye for a bit, and when the time is right, he’ll take you out and have you publically executed.”

Padme sighs impatiently. “Yes, I understand that, but _why_?”

Vader scoffs once again, although this time it is not due to any irritation he feels towards her. “Some political drivel, I’m sure. Sidious has his reasons for keeping you alive, as I have mine.”

Padme furrows her brows in puzzlement once again, taken aback by his statement. The rational side of her screams for her to stay silent and simply nod along with his words, if only to make him leave her alone and give her space to breathe. But even with that line of thinking, Padme impulsively asks, “and what reasons are those?”

She doesn’t mean anything by it, of course. She simply wants to sate her natural curiosity, but Vader seems to take the inquiry strangely.

A shock that is not her own courses throughout her body, and Padme can only watch helplessly as Vader comes even closer, his hand reaching up towards her face.

Padme expects him to slap her for her insolent questions or for her apparent lack of gratitude at being alive, but instead Vader roughly grabs her by her chin and tilts her face up uncomfortably to meet his fiery gaze.

With his proximity, Padme can see his features a bit clearer now. His face was still shadowed by his hood, but beneath it, Padme can catch a glimpse of tanned skin and, she squints slightly, was that _blond hair?_ She almost laughs. Was Darth Vader, a dark Lord of the Sith, the lone harbinger of death to the entire Jedi Order, a blond?

She’s forcefully pulled out of her amused reverie when Vader jerks her closer, causing her body to almost fall into his. She finds herself terrified again.

“Do you want to die, little Jedi, hmm?” He asks, his breath ghosting across her face. The heat of it startles her.

Padme stares up at him silently, her eyes wide, her pink lips parted in confusion. Within her, a mess of emotions were warring for dominance. There was fear of course, and puzzlement, and anxiety, and a million other things, but the feeling that shocks her the most was the one that she could decidedly not name, for she has never felt it before. All she knew was that it was a living and breathing thing, and far from the clutches of her understanding.

Vader’s gloved thumb comes to trail near the swell of her bottom lip, his amber colored eyes fixated on the area. He seems to be riveted by something, and Padme can feel his fascination well up inside her, but all she wants is his distance. His proximity makes her head too fuzzy.

Suddenly, as if her skin burns his hand through the glove, Vader backs away from her and turns, his robes fluttering dramatically behind him as he does. He walks to the door and looks back at her, his gaze boring a hole into her body. He’s angry now. Padme can feel the emotion as if it were her own.

“You will stay here until I command otherwise. A Stormtrooper will bring you food three times a day to ensure your survival, and if I hear any complaints, _any at all_ , I will have you punished myself. Do you understand me, little Jedi?” Vader says harshly, practically spitting the words at her.

Padme, still in a daze at the encounter that happened just seconds prior, simply nods slowly, reaching up to touch her burning cheek.

Vader stares at her for seconds more, before scoffing harshly and stalking resolutely out of her cell.

The white, expressionless helmets of the Stormtroopers and his retreating back in the distance are the last things she sees before the steel door is slammed shut once more, leaving her barred from the rest of the world.

Padme sighs shakily and places her hands over her racing heart, feeling the _thump thump_ of her pulse against her palms.

She moves back to lie on the uncomfortable metal slab, but she barely notices the hard and cool sensation of it against the exposed skin of her back. She stares up at the camera once again, blinking back startled tears.

Earlier, she assumed that seeing Vader again would put her questions to rest and leave her ready to accept her demise, but now, she finds herself more confused than ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vader is my thirsty dark space prince who doesn't even know that he's thirsty. I'm trying to show that he's still attracted to Padme the same way that canon!Anakin was in AOTC but Vader is a lot more clueless about it than Anakin was. Okay so I made a playlist for this fanfic and I was able to link it thanks to the help of a wonderful reader of this fic. Thank you so much!! 
> 
>  
> 
> [as red as blood, as twice as sweet](https://open.spotify.com/user/taygonza12/playlist/1Jq5350IvccW2eNvZ1paV8?si=iJjH4tFzSmK_s4U0tARqHw)


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Space Christine makes a risky move in this game of cat and mouse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Sorry for the brief hiatus, but school sucks and will continue to suck as long as I have 5 hour long homework assignments every goddamn week. But anyway, I hope you enjoy and leave feedback! Also a trigger warning for blood and gore.

> _"The wasted years, the wasted_
> 
> _youth_

_The pretty lies, the ugly truth_

_And the day has come where I have died_

_Only to find, I've come alive." - Teen Idle,_

_Marina and the Diamonds_

 

 

* * *

 

 

Padme spends the next few days swimming in an unending current of absolute monotony. She’s ashamed to say it but she finds that she’s almost… bored.

 A Stormtrooper, who she suspects is the one that Vader teased her about, brings her food and water every day, three times a day, the way the dark lord promised. She is not tortured physically as she feared she would be, but the Stormtrooper doesn’t much like to talk to her, and the isolation is starting to itch at her sanity now.

It’s ridiculous how desperate she’s becoming for companionship. Before, when she was on her ship, she dealt with crushing loneliness in a way that tested the very limits of her being, but in the end, the stars in space and the brief interactions she had with others on random planets were able to sate her need for human interaction. Now, she only has the reflections of herself on the walls and the Stormtrooper who silently brings her food to keep her company. It is maddening and pathetic, but it is human, and Padme has learned over the last two years not to forsake her humanity for peace of mind, lest she become an animal like Vader.

She shivers at the thought of ever becoming a monster like him, and ignores the part of herself that questions as to how Vader became the beast he is. Over these past few days, she has realized that she developed this pesky habit of questioning his motives. Perhaps it was an inevitability that she would begin to do this. After all, she used to be a diplomat, and as a diplomat for the Jedi Council she often had to find ways to question people’s intentions in order to discern their plans and allegiances. It was only a matter of time before this old, ingrained habit would find its focus on Vader. Perhaps it is her mind’s way of keeping itself occupied, or a simple survival tactic, but regardless of the reason, Padme is endlessly annoyed by it.

Letting out a sigh of frustration, Padme closes her eyes and leans back against the metal slab. At first, she was quite uncomfortable with the feeling of cold metal pressing to her skin, especially since Vader never gave her a blanket to fight off the chill of space, but overtime Padme began to welcome the cold. It was strange to think, but in a way, the cold air of space reminded her that she was still alive. It gave her an incentive to keep fighting, no matter how miniscule those efforts to survive might appear. It seems that no matter the situation, Padme always finds a way to keep herself alive. The realization nearly takes her breath away.

She stares up at the camera in the corner that’s aimed directly at her, as always, and feels hysteria bubbling up in her stomach. It reaches out, tangling itself around her throat and squeezes tightly, much like Vader did when he first met her.

She launches herself up into a standing position and forces out a laugh, while simultaneously tangling her fingers into her curls and yanking harshly to force away the panic.

She attempts to meditate, to calm herself, but the cell restricts her connection to the Force. It leaves her feeling blind, defenseless, and achingly incomplete. So far, she believes that this is the worst thing that Vader has ever done to her.

She looks away from the camera and peers into her reflection in front of her, horrified at the bedraggled, desperate girl that stares back at her. This is what she has become. This is what Palpatine will make her, come soon enough.

Padme’s hysterical giggling only increases in volume, and the sensation of slipping heightens with every passing second.

She’s going to die, but it isn’t going to be on her terms. No, instead it’ll be on Palpatine’s orders, and knowing his history, he’ll probably make her execution the most inhumane and humiliating experience that a person could go through. She can’t let that happen. She won’t let that happen, and with a startling clarity, Padme realizes that she knows what to do.

She takes a deep breath away, repressing the lingering anxiety that remains, and stands slowly, her knees visibly shaking. Padme walks carefully towards the metal slab and stares at it for a few moments, giving herself a second to digest what she’s going to do. It’s risky and extremely dangerous, and under normal situations she would never play her hand so quickly, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and Padme has never been one to back down from an opportunity.

Before she can talk herself out of her plan, Padme exhales loudly and suddenly turns to one of the mirrored walls in front of her. She aims a well-executed punch at the glass, groaning in pain as the shards splinter around her fist. Tears gather in her eyes at the stinging agony on her knuckles, but she doesn’t give herself a second to breathe. Padme punches the mirror again, screaming this time, as the shards of glass imbed themselves into her skin.

Panting with exertion, Padme backs away from the fractured wall and stares up at the camera. It’s fixated on her, as she expected, but no voice filters in the room. In other words, no death threats from Vader or warnings from the Trooper that most likely watches over her.

She grimaces at the sight and sighs harshly, turning her gaze back to the mirror. If Vader wants her to play it full out, then she’ll damn well play it full out.

With the same hand, Padme slams her fist against the wall again, her vision exploding with white spots as the pain ricochets from her hand to the rest of her body.

The agony is nearly blinding now, but she can’t stop. She’s so close to getting what she wants that she can almost taste it.

She pulls her hand back and winces at the gory sight. Her knuckles are completely torn, as she expected, and small shards of broken glass stick out every which way on her hand. The bloody mess does not deter her though. On the contrary, the evidence of her scheme only succeeds in motivating Padme further. It is just the knowledge of the pain that’s coming if she continues to keep going that causes her even the slightest hesitation.

Nonetheless, Padme launches forward again, this time hitting the broken glass with the full force of her body.

Underneath the blood rushing in her ears and the blinding pain that suddenly erupts along the entire right side of her body, Padme can hear the sound of the wall shattering completely around her. She bites down on her bottom lip harshly at the continuous torture, blood gushing down along the front of her mouth, her lip immediately swelling up. However, despite all of that, Padme feels satisfaction well up in her chest, because in the distance, she can sense Vader’s panic and rage. His thunderous footsteps match the pace of her racing heart, and his flexing hand at his side is the human manifestation of the organ’s rhythm.

Padme backs away from the shattered mirror once again and swoops down to collect a long, sharp piece of glass lying in front of her. If she squints, she can almost imagine that it’s a dagger.

She turns to the door, clutching the glass tightly in her uninjured hand, and ignores the pain that echoes continuously throughout her body. Briefly, she wonders if Vader can feel it.

The steel door in front of her slides open, revealing the frantic Sith Lord behind it. His rage rolls off of him in waves, and yet curiously, there is another emotion lingering beneath it. Padme cannot identify it.

“What were you doing?” Vader hisses, and Padme’s knees nearly give out at the sheer power and anger that radiates from him. She sighs and forces herself to remain upright, steeling her determination. She lured him here for a reason.

“I was doing what needed to be done,” she says, crouching down slightly, getting into a defensive position. She eyes the lightsaber clipped to his belt and nearly smirks.

Vader takes a second to process her words, along with her bloody appearance and the shattered glass behind her. She can almost sense when he begins to digest the situation.

He ignores her previous statement and approaches her slightly, his fiery eyes trained on the shard she holds in her hand. He stops when he reaches within two feet of her. Padme inches back, a part of her uncomfortable with his proximity.

He motions to the glass. “What are you planning on doing with that?” He questions. “You don’t hope to stab me with that, do you? Because if that’s the case, then I can assure you that your pitiful little weapon won’t be enough to stop me from killing you.”

Padme actually smirks this time, only slightly wincing at how the movement pulls on her split lip.

“I’m well aware of that, Lord Vader, and believe it or not, I’m not so stupid as to think that I can defeat you. I never was.” Padme twirls the glass in her grip fluidly, aiming it exactly where she wants it to go.

“What I was really planning on was whether you were able or not to stop me from defeating myself!” And before Vader can even begin to understand what Padme means, she flips her weapon and shoves it into the meat of her shoulder, screaming in agony as the “dagger” hits home.

Blood streams in rivulets down her arm, and with the added blood loss from earlier and the lack of adrenaline, Padme can feel herself fading quickly, unconsciousness tugging at her mind.

She falls to her knees, whimpering in pain, making herself search for another piece of glass on the floor. Perhaps this was the coward’s way out, but Padme didn’t care. If she had to die, then she would die on her own terms. Not Vader’s, and most certainly not Palpatine’s. Instead, she would become one with the Force and her energy would combine with that of her lost brothers and sisters, and with that of her master’s. Padme cannot imagine anything sweeter.

With another large shard in her grasp, Padme turns it over and aims it this time at her throat, hoping to nick her carotid artery. At least, she would go quickly that way.

Before the glass can hit, however, Padme’s hand is suddenly stilled in a forceful, almost unbearably tight grip.

Startled, Padme quickly looks up and sees Vader kneeled down in front of her, nearly at her level, one of his leather gloved hands wrapped tightly around her own.

His face is still shadowed by his hood, but Padme has never been closer to him than she is at this moment. His features are mostly hidden, but his visible eyes are bright with a mixture of anger, confusion, and blinding panic.

Although she is nearly unconscious now, Padme can’t help the puzzlement that overwhelms her.

Through bloody, ravaged lips she whispers, “Why? Why can’t you just let me die?”

Vader does not answer her. Instead, he pries the glass from her hand and smooths her blood-matted hair back, his touch free of malice.

Padme feels him gather her in his arms, his every move purposeful with the intention of not jostling her, and allows for the black current to take her under.

Before she is fully gone, however, she hears him whisper something to her.

“Because you can't.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is unrelated but I started watching The Vampire Diaries and I'm obsessed with Damon Salvatore oops.


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Space Christine and the Space Phantom snark at each other and other such nonsense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting last night gave me a sudden influx of inspiration so I wrote some more today and decided to post this. I hope you all enjoy and leave feedback!

_“I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I_

_loved you; but I declare I do not_

_love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in_

_the world.”_

_― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre_

 

* * *

 

 

Padme drifts in and out of consciousness as the hours pass, never staying awake for too long and yet never fully asleep. Every so often she’ll hear the whirring of medical droids, or feel the cold and slimy touch of a bacta patch against her shoulder wound, but the sensation always passes as soon as she gets pulled back under. Briefly, she wonders if they keep sedating her in order to assure that she remains docile.

Finally, days or hours or even seconds after the last time she woke, Padme pulls herself through the muddled mess of her mind and forces herself to wake up.

The bright, saturated lights of the med bay burn her eyes and leave her feeling temporarily blind, but eventually she’s able to adjust to the intensity and ignore the pulsing headache at her temples.

Her body is sore, like she just exercised continuously for hours, and yet she feels no sharp, lancing pain stab at her. Instead, the ache in her body is very muted and tame. Even so, however, Padme is afraid to move, lest she gets a painful reminder of her earlier actions.

Instead, she contents herself with looking around and getting a feel of her environment. Since she is no longer located in her cell, the familiar, blissful sensation of the Force running through her veins has returned to her and it leaves her feeling rejuvenated and energized. She has never been cut off from her connection to the Force for as long as she was when she got captured, so she cannot liken the sensation to anything concrete, but she imagines that it is like a person’s arm growing back, or one finding the missing piece to their broken heart. Having the Force was like being whole again.

After a few moments of allowing herself to adjust, Padme decides that it’s safe to move around for a bit. The pulsing at her temples no longer agitates her, and her headache has faded to a dull buzzing. In the back of her foggy mind, she finds that the sensation of it is rather pleasant, like bathing in warm water.

She sits up slowly, still cautious of her injuries, and looks down at herself.

At first, she expected that she was still outfitted in her dusty and grimy Jedi robes, but the sight that greets her is shocking to say the least.

Her shoulders were left bare, perhaps to keep the pressure of clothing away from her bandaged wound, but aside from being sleeveless, she was dressed in a white nightgown that ended just above her calves. The feeling of it against her skin was decadent and silky. It was perhaps the most sumptuous and delicate piece of clothing that Padme has ever worn.

A smile almost breaks out across her face, but it is stopped before it can fully form by a small sting of pain that erupts at her bottom lip. It is childish of her maybe, but Padme can’t help the girlish excitement she feels well up in her chest at the idea of her wearing something so beautiful. Call her vain, but she has always had a weakness for fashion.

Her giddiness almost consumes her entirely before reality starts to set in. She is still alive. She’s been healed. Her plan failed.

Padme’s eyes widen with dismay, and she runs a hand through her silken curls in frustration, finding that they were no longer matted with dry blood. They must’ve bathed her when she was unconscious.

She looks around quickly, hoping to catch sight of a syringe or any sharp object. This time she won’t be so dramatic. Her dead body against her hospital bed will be message enough for the Emperor.

Finally, when she spots a sharp-enough looking medical instrument, of which she is ignorant of the actual usage of, she grabs the object and holds it steadily above her heart.

She takes a second to breathe, to process what she’s about to do. Once the moment to reconsider has passed, Padme takes the instrument farther away from her chest and holds it at an angle where she knows it’ll hit her heart.

By the time, she’s confident with her movements, she pulls it back to her chest, ready to lance her heart and seconds away from actually piercing it. She’s almost there when her hand suddenly freezes in midair, the blade poised to strike at her left breast.

Baffled by this, Padme attempts to move her hand again, only to find that she cannot. Her entire right arm is frozen still.

Immediately, she feels satisfaction whirl up in her chest, and the emotion is so acute that for a second she almost believes that is her own, but within seconds Padme can identify who it belongs to. The pleasant buzzing in her head turns into a heady thrum as she realizes who the culprit is.

“I hope you were not planning on killing yourself again. It didn’t work too well for you the last time.”

Padme swivels her head to look at the man lounging in the corner of her room. He was dressed in all black, as usual, with his hood shadowing most of his features, also as usual, but his gaze burned into her own. He was leaning back into the chair he sat on, his arms crossed in front of him, his head tilted forward and to the side, as if curious.

Even though Padme cannot exactly see him, she can almost feel his smirk move across his face. If her arm was not frozen still, thanks to him, she might have thrown the knife at him instead.

They stare at each other for a few moments, each person taking in the other’s appearance. The tangible connection between the both of them pulses and thrives as they continue to sit in the silence, the silver thread tying them together shining with life.

Padme knows that he can feel the strange buzzing too, it was all over his Force-signature, but she doesn’t know if he knows what it is. It wouldn’t surprise her if he didn’t. She was ignorant of its nature and origin as well.

Finally becoming fed up with his presence, and more than a little confused by the incessant buzzing in her head, Padme turns away from him and crosses her arms, a bit childishly, and ignores the slight wince she makes when she moves her shoulder. She hopes that he didn’t catch it.

In the corner, she hears Vader’s scoff, but she ignores that too.

“What are you? Twelve? You can’t handle failure?” Vader drawls slowly, his tone dripping with condescension. The sound of his voice and his patronizing words infuriate Padme, inciting her more than what was considered normal. She cannot explain it, perhaps not in words that make sense for a Jedi, but for some reason, the very presence of Vader angers her as much as it terrifies her. She chalks it up to him being the sole cause of her people’s extinction.

In the air, she can sense Vader’s easy-to-trigger temper rise at her cold shoulder treatment. His anger meets her own as it swirls together in a fiery tempest in her chest. Out of the corner of her eye, Padme sees him lean forward.

“Look at me,” he commands her, but Padme sits still, cattily enjoying his frustration. _If only Master can see me now,_ she thinks with a bittersweet mix of amusement and sorrow.

“Stop smirking and look at me!” Vader commands again, putting a substantial amount of Force-suggestion in his words.

Against her will, Padme’s head turns to meet his gaze, and almost immediately he begins to adopt that cocky façade again.

He sits back, somehow managing to exude confidence and a healthy dose of superiority as he settles into a chair that’s way too small for his massive frame. He crosses his arms once again, and Padme pretends not to notice how large his arms are or the broadness of his shoulders. Everything about him screams masculinity, and a substantial part of herself shrinks back at that, because then that means that there is something about him, physical or otherwise, that’s human to her.

“So now that you’re compliant, I assume you’re ready to answer my questions?” Vader pauses, as if waiting for a response, but when she supplies none, he continues anyway. “Why the suicide attempt? I thought the Jedi were stronger than that. Although, on the contrary, it pleases me that a few days of solitary confinement broke you so easily.”

Padme is immediately incensed by his statement. “I don’t have to tell you why I did what I did, but what I can tell you was that it wasn’t because I broke. I’m not so easily taken down." She raises an eyebrow. "I survived you, remember?”

Vader’s temper flares at the reminder of his failure two years ago, and Padme nearly smirks when she feels his irritation with her flood into her mind. He shifts slightly in his chair, most likely to maintain some form of composure.

“Really?” He drawls, “you didn’t break? The security footage I saw earlier might contradict that. But then again, what do I know? Perhaps attempting to stab yourself with a shard of glass is just a part of your Jedi training.”

Padme wants to scream, _“but I did stab myself! I didn’t just attempt it!”_ but she doubts that’ll help her case too much. Her mind still feels too muddled from the sedatives for her to speak as eloquently as she usually does, so her present interaction with him just sounds childish and petty. It frustrates her beyond belief. He must think she’s an idiot!

Padme shakes her head slightly, turning her gaze away from his. “I didn’t try to kill myself because I broke, despite what you may think. I did it because I’d rather die than have you or Palpatine control me,” she tells him, her voice lowering slightly. She still attempts to maintain her mask of confidence and assertiveness, but something about her statement sounds too much like a show of vulnerability, and she hopes to the Force that he doesn’t notice.

Vader stays quiet for a few moments, as if considering her words, before he nods. His silence piques Padme’s curiosity, and almost against her will, she moves to look at him.

Through his hood, his amber gaze meets her own, and they sit in the stillness of the moment, quietly appraising each other. Eventually, Vader stands and walks to the end of her bed.

Although she cannot see it, she feels his gaze rest heavily upon her and she barely resists the urge to tuck herself beneath her blanket just so that he cannot see her exposed skin.

“After what you did today, I’ve decided to bring in some reinforced security, just in case you feel like being foolish again.” He opens the door to his right, motioning towards a Stormtrooper that walks in.

Vader turns his hooded head to look back at her. “And look, it’s the one you like so much.”

It takes all the self-control Padme has stored in her body not to roll her eyes at him. What was with him and teasing her? Wasn’t he supposed to be a silent, stoic, blood-thirsty murderer?

Instead of thinking on that for much longer, Padme switches her gaze to the Trooper. With his white, expressionless mask, he looks just as inhuman and intimidating as any other clone, but his Force-signature tells her immediately that he is the same one that brought her food every day.

For courtesy’s sake, Padme flashes him a small, but polite smile. He may work for the Empire and most likely hate her mere existence, but he was a human being, and Padme has been craving human interaction for days now. Maybe that was why she allowed herself to speak to Vader as long as she did.

The room remains silent for a few moments, so Padme keeps smiling in order to not feel so awkward. Strangely, an intense wave of irritation bubbles in her stomach, and the randomness of it lets her know almost instantly that the emotion belongs to Vader. She doesn’t understand the reason for it though. For Force’s sake, she wasn’t even talking!

Her eyes move to catch his again, and his raised shoulders drop back down the second he realizes she’s looking at him.

“CT-1627 will be staying with you as your personal security until your execution. He will come to me at the end of each day to report your behavior as well as any problems that you might give him. He is under strict instructions not to kill you, but remember there are no restrictions on whether or not he’s allowed to use _physical_ force to subdue you. I would advise you to keep that in mind.” The sheer amount of pleasure in his voice as he speaks about the Trooper injuring her is enough to send unpleasant shivers down Padme’s spine. An intense wave of disgust consumes her. She wants him to leave her now.

Vader must sense that she’s tired of his presence, because he moves to the door, his black cape swirling behind him like a dark storm. Before he is fully out, however, his hooded head turns around to look back at her. Padme meets his gaze resolutely, despite wanting to shrink back from it.

“And back to what you mentioned earlier, about you rather dying than having me control you." He pauses and Padme can almost feel the cruel smile that stretches across his face. "I’d ask you not to tempt me, little Jedi. You may not like the results.” And with that last threat, Vader strides out of her room, leaving her to sit in silence with the stoic Stormtrooper standing at the foot of her bed.

Padme takes a second to appraise her new “body guard" and finds herself feeling rather awkward and out of place in her dainty white nightgown. Maybe that’s why Vader made her wear it, to keep her looking small and defenseless in front of all the intimidating soldiers.

“Hello,” she says, uncrossing her arms. She tries to remind herself of all the strategies she learned as a negotiator in order to seem open and friendly, but with the clone trooper’s face covered by his helmet, she’s clueless of his reactions to her efforts. Even his weak Force-signature gives nothing away.

Padme nearly sighs, but forces herself not to. It’s not like she’s attempting to manipulate him into letting her escape, although that would be ideal, and she’s most certainly not going to try seducing him in order to get him to like her. That rotten smuggler Jae being a testament of her skills as a poor seductress. But if Padme is being genuine, she wants a friend, or as near as a friend as she can get in a Stormtrooper who’s loyal to the Empire that exterminated her entire Order.

It’s silent for a while, the trooper standing in the same position by her bed just as he had been since Vader brought him in. Padme speaks again.

“My name is Padme Naberrie, it’s nice to meet you,” she says, resisting the urge to bite on her lower lip. It’s an awful nervous tick to have when one’s mouth is split open.

CT-1627 stands quietly, very much like he has been for the past few minutes, and Padme nearly wants to yank her hair out with how uncooperative he’s being. She’s only trying to be nice!

“What’s your name?” She asks, trying once again to get an answer out of him.

Finally, the clone turns his helmeted head towards her. “My identification number is CT-1627 as Lord Vader said.”

Padme almost wiggles her hips in a tiny victory dance. His reply was curt, and most likely brought on by annoyance due to her constant badgering, but it was an answer!

“Yes, but do you have a name? My clone captain had a name when I fought beside him,” Padme mentions casually, even though the thought of Cody brings on no small amount of sorrow. She wonders where he is. She hopes he’s still alive.

“My name is my identification number. I was recruited at the end of the Clone Wars, just before they stopped creating clones. I didn’t fight long enough to earn a name.”

His statement, so simple and matter of fact, as if it was just a part of reality, breaks Padme’s heart. Her compassion flares at the mere sight of him, and for some reason, every instinct in her body wants her to approach him and give him a hug. Although, she doubts that he would appreciate it too much.

Instead, she slips out from under her covers and crawls towards the end of her bed, stopping as she reaches the middle of it. She doesn’t want to get too close, lest he think she’s trying to attack him and deems it necessary to use that blaster he’s holding.

She sits quietly, tucking her legs under her knees, and turns to smile at him. He doesn’t look away from her.

“Well, I don’t know much about my childhood or my biological parents, but I do know that they gave me my name. I didn’t have to earn it. No human being has to earn their name, and neither do you. How about I just give you one?”

CT-1627 watches her in silence, and although Padme cannot see his expression, his Force-signature pulses with shock. “But I’m a clone!” He says, as if that makes a difference.

Padme’s smile softens with tenderness, her normally stunning face appearing almost radiantly angelic as she turns to meet his gaze through his mask. In the Force, she can sense how dazed he feels at the sight of her.

“And I’m a Jedi. I’m supposedly about as human as you are, but we both know the truth of that, don’t we?” Padme asks, her smile curling into a conspiratorial smirk.

CT-1627 does not respond to that, but she didn’t expect him too. Padme places a hand against her chin, as if in deep thought, and waits for a name to come to her. She looks up at him. “Since this is going to be your name, what do you suppose it should be? And keep in mind that if I say one you don’t like, please don’t be quiet about it. I wouldn’t want you to be named with something that you hated.”

The clone trooper nods at her, and Padme, content with his acquiescence, nods back.

She suddenly sits up. “What about John?”

CT-1627 says nothing, and instantly Padme can tell that he doesn’t like it. She sighs, simultaneously nodding along. “Yeah, I wouldn’t like it either.”

“What about something that starts with a C. It would be easier to keep track of.”

Padme beams at his suggestion, her years of training as a negotiator telling her that by speaking to her voluntarily, he was becoming more comfortable with her presence. “That’s a wonderful idea.”

They descend into silence once again. Padme mentally goes over every C name she knows, but she comes up empty. She used to know Jedi that had names that started with a C, but she doubts that CT-1627 would want to be named after a dead Jedi.

“I think I have one,” he says, his tone nearly shy, and his hesitance makes Padme send him another one of her heart-stopping smiles. She gestures encouragingly at him.

“How do you feel about Cain?” He asks.

Padme tilts her head, mulling over how the name sounds in her head. “Cain,” she says slowly, letting the name roll off of her tongue. She looks up at him, her eyes bright with excitement.

“I love it!” She exclaims, impulsively throwing her arms up. Her shoulder screams with pain at the movement, however, and Padme hisses at the sharp, stinging sensation. It seems as if her shoulder has not fully healed yet.

Cain reaches over to help her move back under the covers, but Padme stops him with an open palm, wordlessly explaining that she’s fine.

She crawls back into bed with one arm, the action being only slightly difficult. Once she’s settled in, Cain walks back to the door, putting his back to the entrance. The suggestion that she might attempt to leave does not hurt her feelings, she would do the same thing if she was in his shoes.

Padme leans back, exhaustion suddenly clouding her mind. She rolls over to her side, resting on her uninjured shoulder, her eyes fluttering closed as she falls into sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

Hours later, Padme is gently shaken awake by someone’s hand. Her eyes slowly open to reveal two men standing in front of her. One of them being Cain.

The other man was unfamiliar to her, but he was young and by the look of his uniform, he was pretty high-ranking for a man his age. His eyes were a dull brown color, and beneath his hat, his hair appeared to be brown as well. The way he looks at her is not cruel, exactly, but it was cold, and as empty as the rest of his expression. He clearly has no regard for her as anything above any other prisoner.

“Jedi, my name is Captain Firmus Piett, but you may simply address me as Captain if you wish,” he says, his tone crisp and serene. He did not have much of an accent, but there existed a certain inflection to his words that reminds Padme of planets belonging to the Outer Rim.

Padme nods respectfully, meeting his gaze. She moves to get out of the bed and the two men inch back to give her room.

The white silk of her nightgown makes the chill of space more apparent when she’s not under a blanket, but Padme is able to stop herself from shivering. However, she doesn’t feel any less embarrassed when she realizes that she’s wearing pajamas in front of two militarily outfitted men. Mentally, she curses Vader.

She straightens down her dress, smoothing her hands down her waist in order to conceal as much skin as possible. When she’s satisfied, Padme looks up and meets Captain Piett’s eyes, offering him her free hand.

He looks down at it briefly, and a flicker of disdain ripples across his face at the sight of it. He doesn’t move to take it, and Padme conceals her hurt behind a polite smile. She silently moves her hand back to her side.

“It is nice to meet you, Captain Piett. My name is Padme Naberrie.”

Piett nods at her introduction and offers her a tight smile, clearly only doing so to be courteous. Padme doesn’t know what’s worse: being disrespected overtly or in the distant, cold sort of way that Piett is treating her with right now. Thinking about it makes her eyes sting so she forces it away from her mind.

After a few tense and uncomfortable seconds pass, Piett once again meets Padme’s gaze and opens his mouth to speak. “We have reached the Imperial Center. We were delayed slightly because Lord Vader had prior engagements before he…” the captain pauses, visibly trying to find the most polite way to phrase the events of her capture. “Found you,” he lamely finishes.

Padme nods, pursing her lips slightly. “So when will I be escorted off the ship?” She asks.

Piett’s awkward expression relaxes, obviously eased by a question he can answer. “Lord Vader will be arriving soon to take you to his estate. The ship will be landing in the bay there.” He states.

Padme smiles politely, offering him a quiet thank you. Captain Piett jerks his head in her direction once as an acknowledgement and then motions for Cain to follow him.

Cain obediently walks towards the door, striding a few steps behind the captain as customary. Padme watches them leave calmly, almost letting them out of sight before something occurs to her.

She marches over to the door and pokes her head out of the room, motioning at them with her hand.

“Wait!” she shouts, feeling shame rise within her as they turn around to look back at her. Her cheeks flush prettily. “Can I have a change of clothes, please?”

Both men stare back at her for a few beats, and unlike Cain, Piett’s puzzlement is all too visible on his face. For a few moments, the awkward silence stretches for what feels like an agonizingly long time, and Padme is just seconds away from retracting her request, before Piett answers her.

“I’ll discuss it with Lord Vader. Hopefully when he comes to collect you, you’ll be provided with a new set of clothing.”

Padmes smiles in gratitude, her cheeks burning a fiery red. She watches them turn back around and walk away before she steps back into her room.

Carefully, she throws herself back onto her bed and stares up at the ceiling, silently waiting for Vader’s arrival.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided that I wanted to clarify some stuff about characterization, specifically Vader's. I haven't gotten any complaints on this or anything, so I'm really just doing this for my own peace of mind. Even though Vader is still the cool, badass dude here that we saw in the OT, he is going to be quite different at the same time. Vader in the OT was mostly evil, to be sure and he will be here too, however, Vader is the OT is also old, sad, and bitter. He's an older man with a lot of regrets. Vader in this story is still bitter, but he's more angry and impulsive too. He's a young man so in a lot of ways, he'll behave like an angry, bitter young man. So my Vader is basically like the Vader you see in ROTS, specifically the novelization version, where he's angry, dark, and impulsive, but at the same he's a snarky piece of shit, especially towards the Jedi council. That's the way he acts here. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say on that. Other characters like Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Padme will all mostly act the same as their canon counterparts with a few differences.
> 
>  
> 
> [Padme's nightgown](https://www.google.com/search?q=white+nightgown&client=safari&hl=en-us&prmd=sinv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjKgujf_YPaAhWJ1IMKHc1iCpcQ_AUIEigC&biw=375&bih=559&dpr=2#imgrc=vEQzbnasTay1KM:)


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Space Christine and the Space Phantom have another face off with not-so-surprising results.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the unintentionally long hiatus, but my inspiration for this story had wavered a bit. I think it had a lot to do with my dissatisfaction at the quality of the writing in the previous chapters, which I will go back and fix. Even still, I love the idea of this story and I love the characters and what I have planned for it, so don't worry, I am not going to abandon it. I just can't promise that every update will be speedy either. We'll just have to see how it unfolds. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this new installment! I had a lot of fun writing it.

_“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not_

_mortified mine.”  
_

_― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice_

 

* * *

 

 

_It was self-defense. That was what her master called it. It was what Captain Cody told her after they all loaded themselves back onto the ship, both clone troopers and Jedi alike, and in her shock, Padme had nodded. She had always been described as a practical child; rational and logical and leagues above her peers in her understanding of the galaxy and the Force._

_So when Master Obi-Wan and Captain Cody reassured her that she was still relatively innocent; still mostly without sin, Padme had taken their words to heart. After all, they had been involved in the war for much longer than she had been. What did she know about life and death when she had so little command of it?_

_But that was earlier, and it had seemed so much easier earlier when she was surrounded by her men, her family practically. That was before the shock wore off._

_Eventually, Padme wanders off from her soldiers, sticky and grimy and streaked in blood, and very much in need of a shower. So far, she has been congratulated on her mental fortitude; on her ability to deal with death so gracefully and with the right amount of detachment; the expected amount._

_Padme had accepted their praise with her typical poise and denials, with her hand waving about dismissively and her cheeks flushed a pretty pink._

_Master Obi-Wan had pulled her aside a few minutes after their debriefing and looked at her with that serene, blue gaze of his and had quietly told her that could “always confide in him.” Padme had laughed off his concerns with a shake of her head and an adamant: “Please, Master! I’m perfectly fine!” And Obi-Wan, with a doubtful look, had taken her word for it._

_Padme wonders now if she should have let him doubt her._

_She breaks down before the water even turns on, as pathetic as that is._

_It starts off slow at first. A gradual build of something-not-quite-right swells in her chest as a gentle wave and then grows and grows until it swallows her whole and sobs bubble out of her mouth like a stream of vomit._

_Her knees buckle and she falls against the hard grey tile, and the jarring impact does very little to break her out of her hysterical state._

_Somewhere in the back of her mind, the fact that she’s still fully clothed and covered in someone else’s blood hits her, and suddenly she’s ripping her robes off like they’re contaminated, her movements jerky and impeding her progress._

_Before she is fully aware of it, her robes have been torn off, and Padme stands under the stream of rapidly cooling water, her chest heaving and her knees buckling dangerously._

_A part of herself isn’t even entirely sure as to why she’s having a full-blown panic attack in her shower, but the other part, the much louder part, is screaming blood! Blood! Get it off! And she feels an almost compulsive need to rip the soft, delicate flesh from the bones of her body and throw it into the emptiness of space._

_It had been so different to kill someone. To take someone’s life. To watch that moment of horrified realization and the slow blinking, as if the lights were going off behind their eyes; their bodies gradually shutting off, lending themselves over to Death’s inevitable grasp._

_She didn’t know the sound a person made when they were stabbed; that quick, shocked inhalation; the sound of it wheezy, garbled around lungs rapidly filling with blood._

_Did her master know that bodies squished when they were stabbed, even with a lightsaber; the weapon that symbolized peace and order, now used to for something so ugly, so criminal?_

_Did her master know that she was weak?_

_They weren’t wrong when they called it self-defense. It was. Really, it was._

_The Seperatist Twilek male had snuck up behind her, a vibroblade clenched tightly in his large fist. He was going to kill her._

_Padme had felt his murderous intent in the Force, and before she could even rationalize herself through it, as she was apt to do, some primal, animal instinct had taken over, and within seconds, her lightsaber was activated and Padme had struck the man right in his gut._

_The men, her men, who had already been rushing over to protect her, had instead stopped short when they witnessed their commander kill the Seperatist rebel. They didn’t condemn her, of course; she had no choice. But they were surprised. Padme could see it in their faces._

_In that moment, she didn’t really feel anything aside from the adrenaline and fear, and she had carried it with her, a swirling tempest of emotion that she wasn’t even fully aware of._

_But now, Padme can feel it. By the Force, can she feel it! The guilt and the shame. The compassion and the remorse. She could’ve talked him down if she tried to. She could’ve frozen him with the Force and let the clone troopers detain him. She could’ve done a million things other than kill him. But she did kill him._

_Force, she killed him…_

_Padme’s quiet sobs escalate into debilitating wails, the full force of them wracking her body into a convulsive fit._

_The water around her has turned pink with the man’s blood and it swirls down the drain in little circles. Padme has the irrational desire to try and jump forward, to cup the blood and return it to the Twilek’s body, to restore him to life._

_But that’s impossible._

_She can’t resurrect him. It would disrupt the balance of the Force, and even in her most desolate moods, Padme would never attempt to toe the line of the Dark Side. The seductive whispers of it burned her._

_Her curls, usually so bouncy and silky and beautiful like the rest of her, lie wet and plastered against her tear-streaked face. She can see her reflection in the mirror across from her, and her appearance frightens her. She has the eyes of a murderer now._

_Padme stumbles out of the fresher half blindly, still slick and naked, and falls against her cot, curling herself into her thin, starchy, military-grade blankets._

_Through her haze of grief and guilt, she resents her status as a Jedi Padawan, wanting so badly to be comfortable and innocent again._

_A knock at her door has Padme peek one eye out of her hovel of blankets, and she wants to yell at the person behind the door; to ask them to leave her alone; to beg for their assurance that she is not a monster._

_A knock sounds again and she doesn’t answer._

_“Padme?” A refined male voice asks through the barrier of her door, and Padme nearly shrieks._

_She doesn’t want to see her master. She doesn’t want him to see her shame._

_“Padme? Are you alright?” he asks again._

_Padme still doesn’t answer._

_“Alright, Padme. I’m coming in.”_

_She wants to rush over and beg him to stay out, to remove himself from her ugliness, for her master is so far removed from anything unpleasant, but before she can, Obi-Wan strides in, his eyes soft and sad._

_It’s that look, that plaintive, empathetic look that has her crying again._

_Her master, although never one for emotional vulnerability and affection, quickly walks over to her and slowly sits at the edge of her cot._

_Padme, feeling oddly childish and small, simply scoots away from him in the limited way that she can._

_Obi-Wan sends her another sad, soft look and tenderly whispers, “hey now,” and Padme finds herself looking up at him._

_“I could feel your emotions screaming to me across the ship,” he explains and then sighs as if resigned. “I knew this would happen someday.”_

_She stares up at him curiously, wordlessly asking, “What would happen?” and her master seems to understand, because he turns to stare at the grey wall of her room, his gaze far away._

_“You’ve always had extraordinary power, Padme. It was apparent even when you were a child, and the masters have always had high hopes and expectations for you. Not only were your powers in the Force strong, but you’ve always had a natural affinity for the Light. You didn’t need to learn to embrace it like most younglings your age did. When you were brought in to the Temple, you already had a certain command of it. Your power in the Light was not nurtured, but ingrained. You’ve always been good.” Obi-Wan takes a breath here, as if approaching the crux of his speech._

_“You know that compassion is key to Jedi philosophy. After all, how can you be a peacemaker without compassion? But you have compassion in spades, Padme. It flows out of you like the waterfalls of your native Naboo. It’s why people are drawn to you. It’s why the men have taken to you so easily; they’re able to recognize someone who truly cares for them, for all living things, even. But you cannot allow your nature to overwhelm you, Padme. You cannot give in to guilt and despair so easily.” He spares her a look of warning. “It’s the easiest way to fall into the trap of the Dark Side.”_

_Padme balks at his words, horrified of even being capable of being seduced into the side of the Sith: the Jedi’s natural enemy._

_Obi-Wan seems to recognize her alarm, because he nods at her approvingly._

_“Do you understand what I mean, Padme?” he asks._

_Padme sits up, still bundled in her blankets, and meets his gaze._

_“But, Master, I shouldn’t have k-killed-“ Padme stops, takes a second to breathe. “I shouldn’t have killed him,” she finally says._

_Obi-Wan turns and pins her with a look. “Do you think that I haven’t been in your position before? Do you think I don’t feel as you do even now, when I allow myself to dwell on it?”_

_Padme simply blinks at him, unsure of how to respond._

_Her master just leans in closer. “Believe it or not, Padme, but despite it all, I am very proud that you feel this way. Death is never any alternative but the last, and we should always see it that way. I admire your compassion and your gentle heart. Being soft is its own form of courage, in my opinion,” he says._

_“But how do I make any sense of it?” Padme asks. She flings her hands out, suddenly frustrated. “There were a million things I could’ve done except kill him. I know that. Don’t you think that says something about me?”_

_Obi-Wan’s eyes turn angry, hard, and he snaps his gaze to hers, his features stern. “And what about me? What about the people I’ve killed? Am I a monster too then?”_

_Padme immediately begins shaking her head, the very core of herself rejecting the prospect of her master being anything less than kind and gentle; than being the perfect Jedi and friend that she knows him to be._

_“No, Master! Of course not!” she protests, still shaking her head vehemently._

_Obi-Wan’s features soften, his eyes alight with his fondness for her._

_He scoots in a bit closer and places his callused hands at her bare shoulders. “Then don’t think of yourself that way, my young Padawan. You are among the most caring people I’ve ever met. Of all the words in all the languages that exist in the galaxy, monster is the term that describes you the least,” he says tenderly._

_Padme feels her cheeks heat at his kind words and proximity, and suddenly she remembers that she’s naked under her blanket._

_Padme squeaks and moves away from her master, yanking her blanket all the way up past her neck, her face a bright, cherry red. “Thank you,” she squeaks out, her words slightly muffled by her sheets._

_Obi-Wan sends her a questioning look and moves to stand up, but before he can, a certain strange impulse seems to come over him, and he leans over and pats her head affectionately, as if she’s a little girl again._

_He stands up fully and sends her one last smile and walks out of the door._

_Padme watches after him, her heart racing and her face burning, but smiling all the same._

* * *

 

The sound of a door swishing open has Padme wake up. She feels startled and disoriented, but mostly confused, since she didn’t remember going to sleep in the first place.

She starts to sit up as a small squad of Stormtroopers march into her room, their blasters held dangerously in their hands, and although Padme cannot see him, she knows that Vader is nearby.

He walks right in as Padme stands up, smoothing down the crinkled lines of her silky nightgown and running her fingers through her soft hair. As she does, she can smell the faint scent that wafts off her curls, something flowery, and she likes it so much that she has to stop herself from asking what it is.

She finally turns her attention to Vader and straightens up swiftly, subconsciously falling into a battle stance. It’s a ridiculous thing to do, really, since the Stormtroopers probably have orders to shoot at the slightest provocation and Vader has his saber clipped to his belt, but Padme can’t help it. He terrifies her so much that it’s natural for her to fall into skittish-animal mode, ready to flee at any given opportunity.

Vader crosses his arms over his broad chest and stares her down, seemingly satisfied by her blatant fear of him.

“We’ve arrived at the Imperial Center,” he begins and strides forward so that he stands so close to her that she has to crane her head upwards to look at him. If she weren’t so afraid, she might’ve scoffed at his obvious and petty attempt at an intimidation tactic.

“As you already know, you’ll be staying with me at my temporary home there. No one aside from the men in this room, some high ranking officials, and the Emperor, know that you’re here. If you want to remain on my good side, I would advise to exercise some discretion about your existence. Sidious wants his political send off, and I want you out of my hair, and the quickest way to do that is for you to follow my orders.”

Padme belatedly thinks, _you have a good side?_ but the foreign swell of irritation that floods her has her nodding obediently.

Vader nods approvingly at her acquiescence and makes a come hither gesture at one of the Stormtroopers behind him.

Cain marches to his side and drops a bundle of grey cloth in his hands, which Vader holds out to her.

Padme stares at it questioningly and then raises an eyebrow at him.

Vader sighs, as if irritated by her confusion. Which, knowing him, he probably is.

“Captain Piett told me that you required a change of clothes. Being the honorable captor that I am, I decided to bring you some,” he says.

Padme almost scoffs at his self-description, but she pushes the urge aside and takes the clothes from his outstretched hand, unfolding them in her own.

It’s a dress. A rough, starchy, short grey dress that she immediately detests on principle alone. She would look like a waif in this.

Vader chuckles at her apparent distaste and snaps his fingers at her, startling her out of her materialistic stupor. “Come now, Jedi, you can’t afford to be picky. I happen to think that a prisoner’s outfit would be rather fetching on you.” He sneers. “It might remind of your place.”

Padme looks down helplessly at the bundle in her hands and wishes retroactively that she never asked Captain Piett for a change of clothes. She vastly prefers what she’s wearing now, no matter how small or delicate she may feel in it.

Vader must sense her indecision because he steps closer and tsks at her, wagging a finger in her face.

“Don’t act spoiled, Jedi. I extend my generosity to you and you blatantly reject it. Get dressed,” he orders.

Padme looks up at him defiantly, wanting so much to disobey him, to spit into the blackness of his hood, but she doesn’t. She can’t. Not here, with six armed Stormtroopers surrounding her and a monster at the head of them.

Instead, Padme just sighs and nods curtly, humiliated and annoyed. She sets the dress on the bed behind her and looks at them expectantly, waiting for them to leave.

Vader just stands there, his arms crossed, his smugness rolling off of him in waves.

“Well?” she finally asks, to which Vader just replies, “Well?” in return.

A spark of anger ignites itself in her belly and she snaps around, her curls whipping around her face like snakes. “Get out!” she screeches.

Vader doesn’t seem to take to her defiance well, because he just stands straighter and gestures at the shifting Stormtroopers to stay in place.

“We can’t,” he says simply. “You’re a risk to yourself.”

Padme feels horror erupt in the pit of her stomach at the thought of having men watch her change, so she stands firm, as stubborn as Vader now.

“I’ve agreed to everything you’ve told me so far. The least I’d expect you to do is offer me the slightest bit of respect and leave when I ask you to,” she huffs, crossing her arms.

Vader laughs uproariously at her, as if she’s said something funny. He steps closer to her and roughly takes ahold of her chin. “But I don’t respect you,” he taunts, squeezing her jaw. “And you haven’t agreed to anything. You don’t have a _place_ to agree to anything. You’re a prisoner, not a guest. Everything I tell you is tantamount to an order from the Emperor, so when I tell you change, you change,” he sneers and then shoves her face away.

Tears of humiliation burn at her eyes, but Padme doesn’t give Vader the satisfaction of seeing her sorrow, even though he must surely sense it.

Padme exhales slowly, fighting her tears, and stands up to her full, unimpressive height.

Vader steps away from her and gives her the space to change, his eyes steadfast upon her. The Stormtroopers behind him don’t look away either.

A fiery rage consumes Padme at the spectacle he’s reduced her to for his own petty amusement and hatred. _Fine,_ she decides. _If he wants to see me change, he’s going to damn well see me change._

Padme switches her gaze to his, her eyes alight with her fury and defiance. As she reaches for the hem of her silky nightgown, she doesn’t look away from him once.

She pulls the soft fabric off of herself quickly, even as her injured shoulder screams at the stress her jerky movement causes it.

She stands before him in fresh underwear, and she’s thankful at least that whoever healed her had the decency to give her a new pair of breast wraps. She turns around and grabs the grey starchy dress and turns around again, setting her eyes back on Vader.

A strange, fiery sensation lights up low in the pit of her belly, much like her anger earlier, only now it does not burn her, but leaves her feeling pleasantly achy. The sensation confuses her though, because she knows that it’s not her own. She decides it must be Vader then, but the cause for it still puzzles her. She’s never felt this sensation before.

Before long, she’s pulled on her prisoner garb and she winces at how unpleasantly it feels against her skin. She turns an expectant look on Vader.

Vader shifts again and rolls his shoulders. He clears his throat abruptly and then does so again. “Very well,” he says curtly, but the sound of his voice is strange and raspy. He doesn’t sound as smug or as composed as he did earlier, which causes Padme to smile, even if she doesn’t know why he’s acting so strangely.

Vader crosses and recrosses his arms, fidgeting slightly, almost unperceptively, but Padme’s eyes are quick enough to catch his physical discomfort. Even the Stormtroopers behind him shift in place. _Good,_ she thinks smugly. _They deserve to feel uncomfortable._

“Well,” she drawls, striding up next to him, her bare feet padding against the floor, her movements vaguely feline. “Are you going to go? I’d like to speed up the process for my execution. I’ve always been a stickler for efficiency,” she quips, tossing her curls over her shoulder.

Vader’s foul mood seems to return by her sass, and he grabs her forearm and jerks her roughly forward.

He leads her out of the door and practically hauls her out of the room, and Padme stifles a yelp at the unexpected movement.

The Stormtroopers, seemingly snapped back into focus, march in a coordinated semi-circle around the Sith and the put upon Jedi.

Padme tries to walk with as much grace as she can, but Vader’s strength along with his long stride, has her scrambling for her feet to find purchase along the cold floors. Soon enough, she begins struggling in his grip.

Vader snarls at her defiance and jerks her around roughly, stopping in place.

Once Padme’s vertigo wears off, Vader shoves his hood in her face, causing her to rear her head back at his sudden proximity. However, he doesn’t allow her to move back too far, because his other hand tangles itself in the curls that lie at the nape of her neck. Padme’s eyes widen. He’s so close that she can actually see the amber color of his eyes, feel the harsh, angry pants of his breath against her neck. “Hurry up,” he bites out.

Padme swallows and tries to talk around the hitch in her throat. “Y-You’re walking too fast,” she stammers, suddenly as meek as a mouse. She always feels this way when he’s too close to her.

Vader’s eyes scan down her face, settling his eyes on the petal pink of her parted lips, the marble line of her delicate throat, on the heaves of her panting chest. Padme feels that achy pleasantness again, only now she doesn’t know who it belongs to. Before she can dwell on it much longer, he pulls away and the feeling leaves her.

“Do you ever consider how inconvenient your diminutive height is for me? It feels like I’m lugging around a child,” he snaps at her, jostling her injured shoulder in his grip.

Padme winces at the sting, but the pain of it diminishes under a fresh wave of annoyance. “Do _you_ know how inconvenient it is for _me_ for you to drag me around like a sack of feed? I’m not an animal. I’m a young lady. A perfectly normally sized one, thank you very much,” she sasses back, raising her nose up haughtily.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows that they both realize how childish their bickering is, how insignificant it is in the wake of her impending public execution, at his hands no less, but it is difficult for them to see past their disdain for each other. Any battle with Vader is a worthy one in Padme’s mind. She’s sure he feels the same way about her.

Vader shoves his hood back into her face again, but Padme doesn’t cower this time. Instead, her eyes light up with the promise of a verbal altercation with him.

“Walk faster then,” he says lowly, to which Padme scoffs and sniffs at him. “I can’t,” she says slowly, as if he’s simple. “I can be the fastest walker in the world and I still wouldn’t be able to catch up with your gargantuan legs.”

Vader huffs, the sound of it on the side of amusement, but Padme doesn’t like the idea that he might find her responses entertaining, so she ignores it.

“You don’t think so do you?” he asks slowly, mimicking her condescending tone. Padme shakes her head firmly at him.

“Well then,” Vader says grandly, letting her arm go and pacing away from her. He turns his hooded face to a Stormtrooper. “Whatever shall we do then to ensure her safe delivery to my base?” he asks, although his tone suggests that he doesn’t want an answer. The Stormtrooper, seemingly aware of this, doesn’t move or make any indication that he heard him.

Vader simply turns his gaze back to her, his amber eyes alight with slick amusement. “I suppose I’ll just have to personally deliver you myself then, since you’re so unwilling.”

Padme feels her bravado falter at his look and feels a swell of apprehension rise up in her. She’s suddenly afraid again.

Before she can even question what he means or what he means to do, the Sith rushes her and hauls her roughly over his broad shoulder. He turns around and continues his long strides out of the isolated hallway, where the troopers follow him silently, as if there’s nothing strange about their leader carrying a prisoner off of their ship.

Once the shock of being _carried by Vader_ wears off, Padme begins struggling against his hold. She jerks herself around roughly, scratching and clawing at his clothed back like a rabid feline. She hits everywhere she can: the back of his head, his shoulders, his spine. She even attempts to make an ambitious strike towards the back of his knee in order to make him to fall over, but the size of her arms and a quick, well-timed upwards jerk by Vader results in her failure.

“Let go of me, you monster!” she shrieks, continually pounding at his back. “You fucking monster! Let go of me! Let me down!”

Vader simply jostles her over his shoulder, causing her to wince. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, you should watch your language and your volume, Jedi, we’re reaching a section of the ship that may have more people that can hear you.”

Padme snarls and feebly kicks at his chest. “I’ll be as loud as I want!” she shrieks, fisting his leather doublet in her hands. “You’re not the one being hauled around like a naughty child!”

Vader chuckles at her insolence and swats at the back of her thighs. Padme gasps.

“Behave,” he orders blandly. Padme can feel the amount of Force suggestion he puts behind it.

Against her will, she promptly shuts her mouth and sags against his shoulder. Despite her outwardly calm appearance, a hailstorm of fire and rage rails inside of her. She’s never so badly wanted to wring someone’s throat before.

Eventually, they must reach an exit, because Vader hauls her down and has two Stormtroopers speedily wrap a blindfold around her eyes and shove a gag into her mouth. Padme tries to spit it out, but the trooper’s grip is firm, and Vader restrains her arms.

When she’s sufficiently blinded and silenced, Vader lifts her back up and strides forward.

She can hear his boots thump against the floor, an obviously different floor, so she gathers that they must be at his base now, and that they blindfolded her in order to keep her clueless about where she is and how to escape. If she weren’t so incensed, she might’ve applauded them on their insight.

Vader carries her around for ten minutes or so, before the sound of a heavy metal door opens and shuts behind them.

Padme feels Vader reach a hand towards her waist and pull her down, her head lolling with the sudden movement. Before she can gain back her momentum, he rips the gag from her mouth and the blindfold from her eyes and shoves them into his robes.

Padme blinks rapidly at having her sight back and attempts to decipher her location from the Force. It takes just seconds for her to realize that she’s been cut off again.

Desperation rises within her at the realization and before she can say anything, demand to be moved, or even beg for him to tell her where she is, Vader and his squadron of Stormtroopers stride towards the door.

Vader looks back at her, his smug amber gaze meeting her wide eyes.

“Welcome home,” he taunts and then shuts the door behind him. The heavy clang of it echoes along with his retreating footsteps.

She is alone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Btw I listened to a lot of Marian Hill while writing this chapter, which may have had a sliiight influence on how it unfolded. The song specifically was Back to Me. It's a pretty good song. Also Vader's such a dick right? Idk why but for as much as I love redeemed!Anakin, writing a young, Anakin-ish Vader is just so much fun. And poor Padme. I just love her so much.


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Space Phantom meets with Space Frollo and takes on a new mission. Space Christine is out of her depth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Slight violence and depictions of panic attacks. Read at your own risk.

_“His dagger was out, poised at her throat._

_“Sing, little bird. Sing for your_

_little life.”_

_― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings_

 

* * *

 

 

Vader’s heavy footfalls thump against the gleaming, yet sterile monochromatic floors of the Imperial Palace. Four Stormtroopers walk in sync behind him, their blasters held at the ready. Compared to their commander’s broad form, they look practically diminutive, although Vader doesn’t mind their presence. Despite his antisocial tendencies, he finds that being surrounded by his soldiers is tolerable, even if their mandated “protection” over him is largely ceremonial.

Soon enough, Vader finds himself standing before the large, ornate doors of his master’s throne room. A red-cloaked guard notices his presence and alerts his partner. They both move in almost startling synchronicity and open the wide, steel doors of a noticeably Nabooian design.

Vader stalks past them, accustomed to their routine and strides towards his seated master. When he reaches Sidious, he bows immediately, his hooded face held low and submissive, his amber eyes out of sight.

 _Submissive._ It almost makes him bare his teeth. He doesn’t though. Although he has become quite adept at hiding his emotions from Sidious- and vice versa- he also knows that his master has an uncanny talent for sniffing out mutinous emotions and a sadistic pleasure for inflicting pain on those who would entertain them.

“Master,” Vader greets stoically. “You’ve summoned me.”

Sidious smiles genially, his yellowing, rotten teeth emerging proudly. He lounges in his throne for a few more moments without acknowledging his apprentice further, no doubt enacting one of his petty attempts at a power play. A swell of fury rises in Vader, enriching his inky black Force signature, but he doesn’t allow it to go further.

 _Wait for it_ , he thinks. _Wait for it._

Finally, Sidious seems to have had his fill of his apprentice’s supplication because he quirks two weathered fingers upwards. Vader notices the movement and rises slowly, folding his gloved hands behind his back.

“Yes, I have,” Sidious says, his tone deceptively amiable. Vader feels his shoulders tense instinctively. It’s never a good sign if his master acts friendly, or rather, as close to friendly as is humanly possible for him.

Sidious reaches towards a goblet at his side and brings it to his cracked lips, taking a slow, but full sip. He sighs pleasurably as it goes down.

Vader watches this production quizzically, yet remains alert, his fingers flexing behind his back. His lightsaber burns against his hip.

_Wait for it._

“Aged wine sent from the Senator of Naboo- the damned sycophant-. It’s sweet but there is a note of spice that lingers beneath.” Sidious grins widely and sucks a drop of the drink from his finger. “Delectable taste, really,” he remarks pleasantly as he takes another sip. Then, as if the thought suddenly strikes him, Sidious gestures towards the bottle that rests a few paces off to the side. “Do you want any?”

Vader grins bitterly. Technically, it was against the Sith’s decree to partake in unnecessary luxuries, but Sidious- like with all things that didn’t benefit or please him- disregarded this rule entirely, hence the existence of royal concubines and the ornate design of the Palace.

Vader holds up a hand. “I don’t imbibe,” he says.

At least, not in front of his master.

Sidious tsks, as if this apparent fact is tragic and takes another sip. He smacks his lips loudly. “A shame,” he remarks. “The flavor truly is a marvel.”

Vader opens his mouth, prepared to ask what the hell this topic of conversation has to do with anything anyway, when his master sets his goblet down loudly.

“While we’re on the topic, how is our sweet little Jedi?”

_Oh._

Vader nearly smirks at the mention of the girl, her wide, pleading expression right before he locked her away crossing his mind. Even with that smug amusement though, a wave of irritation and anticipation battle within him as well.

“The Jedi is miserable, as per my intention, although she has taken up an amusing venture to befriend every Stormtrooper who passes through her door.”

Sidious barks a laugh. “And how successful has she been, exactly?”

Vader takes a second to consider a certain CT-1627 and his slight, if hesitant, gentler approach towards the Jedi; no doubt a result of her bestowing a name upon him. An act that even he knew was considered significant; a mark of individuality; a sign of someone who _cared_.

He nearly sneers.

“A fruitless effort, Master,” Vader remarks snidely, cocky, despite being relatively facetious. He knows the men behind him are aware of his slight fib as well and yet they give nothing away. Not one of them even shifts a hairsbreadth to the side.

Good to know.

Sidious practically preens, no doubt congratulating himself on having a loyal military behind him, ready to move at the slightest provocation.

Vader lets him entertain this train of thought, aware that the soldiers behind him could give a damn about the whims of the emperor.

“And yet, despite the facts you have just presented to me, something troubles you, my young apprentice,” Sidious states and then strokes his wrinkled chin with a weathered, pale hand. “Is there something you feel that you must tell me?”

Vader almost scoffs at the question. _Isn’t there? Shouldn’t it be obvious?_ Sidious sent him off to kill that roach of a Jedi; promising that Vader would finally have his pound of flesh in retaliation for her continued survival of two years. Of course, he was aware that he would not execute her immediately- Sidious always has been a fan of major political send-offs and symbolism- but even still, Vader grows impatient with the girl’s survival.

He hates her. He hates everything about her. He hates what she is. He hates the organization she still obviously is loyal towards. He hates her resilience and her temper and the constant awareness he has of her. He hates her with a loathing that encompasses everything that he is and overshadows any other emotion he has ever felt. He hates her with an intensity that could crumble empires to dust.

“I am not bothered, Master,” Vader states, lying yet again. They both know it this time. “I am simply confused.”

Sidious raises a brow, deepening the stark, disgusting fissures of his face beneath his hood. “Oh?”

He nearly groans at his master’s faux-obliviousness. If there is anything that Vader dislikes about Sidious- of which there are many, many things- it is his evasiveness; his politician’s way of approaching nearly any enemy with false promises and backdoor deals and saccharine words to conceal the venom hiding beneath.  

Personally, Vader much prefers dealing with adversaries with the blunt force of his lightsaber. He has no patience for the sycophants that Sidious calls the Imperial Senate. In fact, he has asked his master on several occasions why the Senate- an integral force of the late Republic- still exists and Sidious has always stated that the “appearance of representation must exist, even if there is none, to maintain the loyalty of the people” but Vader doesn’t understand that reasoning either. He hardly thinks the people are simple enough to believe they have something as contrived as _representation._ What keeps them in line is fear. Nothing else.

“Yes, Master. The girl,” Vader says, focusing again.

A smile ghosts across Sidious’s face. “Yes, the girl. Our captured Jedi. What of her?”

Vader sneers at the mere thought of her; of the thought of her pleading, brown eyes and her brunette tousled curls, soft against the skin above his gloves-

“She’s alive,” he bites out, forcing his imaginings away. “Why is that?”

Sidious laughs. “So she is. Do you know why that is?”

Vader wants to strangle something. If he did, he wouldn’t be asking.

“Surely, Lord Vader, my political prowess must have rubbed off on you at least a little? I’m sure even the girl must have some understanding as to why she’s currently being held captive and not dead on a spike,” Sidious says, chortling a bit.

Vader doesn’t appreciate the slight on his intelligence, but he ignores it. His curiosity overrides his irritation.

“And why is that?” he asks, folding his arms.

Sidious leans forward in his throne and steeples his fingers. “Lord Vader, you have been exterminating those who would call themselves the Rebellion. That young _Jedi-“_ he sneers at the girl’s title-“survived in space for two years without being detected. Surely she must’ve had _some_ assistance.”

Vader considers his master’s implication. Logically speaking, Sidious has a point. It would make sense for the girl to have had outside assistance at some point in her escape. After all, she was the only one who managed to flee when Jedi Masters twice her age and experience were slaughtered in his wake; perhaps she had been warned? But something inside of Vader niggles at the thought. Considering what he’s seen of the Jedi, of her compassion towards CT-1627 and her continued courtesy towards Captain Piett in spite of his obvious disdain for her, something about her not leading her Jedi brethren to safety doesn’t seem right.

But then again? What does Vader know about her? Nothing. He knows nothing at all. So he simply nods. “Perhaps,” he says.

Sidious snaps to his left and red-cloaked guard approaches him with a small datapad in hand. At Sidious’s behest, the guard hands it to Vader.

Vader takes it and starts scrolling through it immediately.

“It’s a file of all of the information we have collected of the Jedi. Her place of birth, her midi-chlorian count, her master, and basically every significant and insignificant thing we could find of her.”

Vader looks down at the screen in his hands. In the file, there is a picture of her, clearly a promo taken during the Clone Wars, and her name typed in black letters across the top.

 _Padme Naberrie_. Vader mouths it from behind his hood. Feels it on his tongue. Somehow it fits her.

“She’s from Naboo,” he says.

Sidious laughs. “Yes, she is, a fellow native like me. The cast-off daughter of an influential family. In another life, she could’ve been a politician or a business woman of some sort. I have to admit, it endears her to me slightly.”

Vader doesn’t say anything back, doesn’t even acknowledge that nothing anyone could ever do could endear themselves to someone like Sidious, who holds no regard for anything but himself and power.

Vader wants to admit that he is just as infallible, just as incorruptible from his corruptibility, but there lies a shadow in his heart that bears the name of his mother, and he could never extinguish that. Not even if he wanted to.

“So what do you want me to do?” Vader asks before tucking away the datapad.

“I want you to extract that information from the Jedi. See if she knows their whereabouts, their bases, the locations of any remaining Jedi. You cannot fail me in this,” Sidious commands, his tone sharpening towards the end.

Vader bows yet again. The meeting has drawn to a close. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Master,” he replies.

Sidious simply sits back, dismissing him with a small wave of his hand. “Ensure that you don’t.”

Vader nods once and turns back around, his squadron of troopers moving with him.

In one synchronized movement, they all file out of the throne room, and Vader leads them towards the ship he has docked at the front of the palace.

“Take me to my base,” he orders the pilot and the doors shut behind him.

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes, Padme wishes that she had been born into a different life.

She had never known her parents, and like most Jedi her age, had never really wanted to know them. She had had her master, and Obi-Wan filled the void of a family in ways that she never even really thought about until he was gone.

Gone. The _nice_ word for dead; for murdered. He was gone, but he was murdered, and she was here. Left behind.

Tears cloud her eyes and she wants to curse, to scream, to hate with every fiber of her being, because her master was so infallible. She could’ve never imagined a day where he would be taken from her. It was a sacrilege, almost, for her younger self to imagine her master getting hurt when he seemed to be so far above all those that would hurt him. But obviously that wasn’t true. He was dead.

It still seems wrong to think that. To acknowledge it. Obi-Wan was wise. He was kind. He was the shining example of what a Jedi should be, and Padme looked up to him in everything. He taught her everything and never resented her when she was able to best him in something.

He was her best friend. Her family.

Padme laughs in some bittersweet fashion as a certain old, nostalgic emotion flutters in her chest.

Why, when she was younger, she even thought that she-

“Get up.”

Padme startles and sits up swiftly, giving herself vertigo. Vader stands before her. For a moment, it scares her that she wasn’t able to sense him walking down to her cell, but she suppresses the strange emotion. She doesn’t like the idea of becoming used to him in any way.

“Good morning,” she answers back, busying herself with smoothing down the curls of her hair.

Vader growls at her courtesy. “Get up,” he insists, and Padme rolls her eyes.

“Just wait a moment!” she bites back, moving to the edge of her cot and lifting herself up with her arms. She almost shivers when her bare feet touch the cold of the linoleum floors.

Vader tenses at her attitude but does nothing, surprising her with his patience. Usually, he’d snark at her by now; make some comment about her imminent death and some snide insult over her fragility and she’d roll her eyes and sass something back.

Well, in some ways she supposes that she has grown used to him.

But not in any way that suggested camaraderie or a vague sense of contentedness with each other. Of course not. The idea almost makes her gag. But in some fashion, she has become accustomed with his attitude and her bad habits, surely as he’s become familiar with hers.

When she is up, she holds her wrists out in front of herself obediently; almost mindlessly, and in some small way, her pride stings, but Padme- for all her faults- is a girl forged from her adaptability. She is a survivor, and part of being one is knowing which battles are worth fighting.

Arguing over whether she needs to put on cuffs is not something she’s decided is worth her energy and dealing Vader’s explosive anger, despite its effect on her pride.

Vader gives no reaction to her compliance, but she can sense that he seems pleasantly surprised by it in some way. The small, insecure girl she was as a teenager, brightens at this unspoken brand of validation. But the young woman she is now, wants to yank back her hands and snarl at him, unwilling to please him in any fashion.

Padme ignores both of them. However, she does flinch back slightly when the leather of Vader’s glove skims across the surface of her wrists as he secures the Force-resistant handcuffs.

He jerks her forward by her upper arm and the procession starts forward.

He keeps his grip at her bicep, and she feels distinctly unsettled by the hint of warmth she can feel radiating from his black gloves.

It makes her imagine things she’s better off never thinking about: like what he looks like, what species he is, whether or not he is human. Anything and everything that she doesn’t want to associate with him, because Vader is a monster. Plain and simple. Anything else would be unfathomable.

A Stormtrooper, seemingly falling out of step for a moment, nudges her free arm, and Padme instinctively looks to see who it is. It was the clone to her left, and even though they all were practically indistinguishable beneath their helmets, Padme is almost certain that it was Cain. And then she’s not so sure if the action was accidental or not.

The thought leaves her almost irrationally giddy, to be touched in a way that belied an uneasy affection, a vague sense of near-friendship, and she smiles beatifically at him.

He ignores her, but the warm feeling in her chest is enough.

Soon enough, Vader arrives at their destination and quickly punches in a code that opens the wide, steel doors in front of them.

When they have finished opening, he shoves her inside, and if it were not for her quick reflexes, the force of his push might’ve caused her to fall.

Padme catches herself on the edge of a steel table- everything is steel and sterile- and glares viciously over her shoulder. “I hate you,” she snarls, and he ignores her, gesturing at one of the troopers.

Two of them step forward and grab her; one grip crushingly hard and the other firm, but almost gentle.

Cain.

They drag her over to a hard-looking chair with straps and force her down onto it. Padme struggles slightly, but not enough to earn their ire.

Vader approaches her, standing too close. It makes her uncomfortable. He makes her uncomfortable.

There’s a menacing undercurrent to his seemingly calm façade, and it makes her insides shrivel with anticipation and debilitating fear. She wasn’t paying attention to where they were heading, exactly, but she has enough sense to know that it is isolated. Probably in some unused hallway or- Force forbid- somewhere underground.

She’s surrounded by obedient soldiers that hold no loyalty towards her and a monster that wiped out her people and has been itching to stick her head on a spike for as long as she’s known him. She’s being strapped down to a chair. She’s unarmed.

She’s afraid.

Her squirming intensifies.

“What is this?” she demands, inserting as much authority into her voice as humanly possible, but even she can hear the petrified undercurrent to it.

There’s a flash of white from behind Vader’s hood and a flood of smug amusement that echoes in her chest. He laughs, and the sound of it causes shivers to race down her spine.

“What do you think?” he asks, folding his arms over his chest. “Does the steel chair and the armed soldiers behind me make you feel like this is a lunch date?” he quips sarcastically.

Padme snarls at him, but it is pitiful; weak and tempered by fear.

Vader strides closer and then walks behind her, roughly grabbing the back of her curls and forcing her head back against the seat as one of the troopers secure some sharp looking, metal ring around her head.

Padme yelps at the pain. Tears cloud her vision, but she refuses to let them fall.

Vader walks back in front of her and takes a chair from the corner of the room. He turns it over and sits down, straddling the back and almost dwarfing it with his size. Her heart skitters against her chest like an injured bird in a cage. The severity of it makes her ache.

“You’re obviously familiar with my master,” Vader starts, and Padme can feel the fear lessen a bit as a molten hatred creeps it.

 _Palpatine._ The only person she despises more than the monster in front of her.

“Yes,” she bites. She flexes her wrists against the straps.

“Good. At least that’s one thing you know,” he remarks snidely, and Padme almost growls at him for his slight on her intelligence.

“The point is: Sidious is a very well-learned man. So am I. And, assuming you have _some_ existing form of critical thinking and sense, so do you.”

Now she is confused. “What do you mean?” she asks.

Vader leans forward. “You were in space for two years. You were able to stop for fuel, eat, sleep, bathe, and run without detection. You had help,” he accuses flatly, counting off her accomplishments on his fingers.

For a second, she is dumfounded. Help? She was petrified of even speaking to someone for two years. How could she have mustered up the courage to ask for help?

She shakes her head. “Wh- I. What do you mean?”

Vader sighs harshly and stands up abruptly from his chair. He stalks over to her and roughly grabs at the soft flesh of her cheeks, squeezing her to the point of pain. He grabs a sinister looking syringe and holds it at her carotid.

“You. Had. Help,” he bites out, each word punctuated by his hand practically squashing her jaw.

Padme winces and fights off the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. She shakes her head.

“I didn’t,” she gasps, lips crushed and words muffled by the black leather of his glove. “I swear, I didn’t.”

“You know about the Rebellion. _Tell_ me.”

Padme chokes off a sob, terrified down to her bones. She shakes her head fiercely. “What Rebellion? I don’t- I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know anything.”

Vader snarls and drops the syringe, grabbing the nape of her neck and pulling her closer. She turns her face away and squeezes her eyes shut, not wanting to look into his amber eyes, red as hellish flame.

“Of course you don’t,” he growls, and he’s so close that she can feel the gravelly reverberations of his chest. “You’re so innocent. Some poor, mistreated, _sweet_ little Jedi-“ He shoves her head back but keeps his hand at her nape-“You make me sick.”

He hasn’t really injured her yet, but Padme is sobbing with the overload of his harsh touch and her fear.

She wants to scream _get away!_ at him, but the terror clogging her throat keeps her from doing anything but crying.

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out. She’s shaking. She can’t stop shaking.

“I’m sorryI’m sorryI’m sorry-”

She doesn’t know what the Rebellion is, but she wishes that she did, because maybe then she could tell him and he’d let her out of this horrible room and chair and straps because she doesn’t know she doesn’t know she doesn’t know she really doesn’t.

In the midst of her shaking and sobbing, Vader must’ve let her go, because she can’t feel his hand at her nape anymore, and even though that presents some shallow form of relief, she still can’t stop crying. She doesn’t think she ever will.

The awful, sterile room is silent save for her soft whimpers and stuttering hiccups, and in the back of her mind, she thinks she must present a pitiful picture to the men around her, but she can’t find it in herself to care. Let them think her weak. Let them become uncomfortable at the sight of a petite girl attempting to fold into herself as much as the chair she’s strapped to allows her to be. Let them feel guilty. Let them feel _something._

After a few moments, Vader moves to stand before her, and she can’t stop the violent flinch she makes when she sees him.

He sighs inaudibly, but Padme can vaguely feel the rise and fall of his chest ghost across her own and she hates it. She hates that something inside of her knows him so acutely when she wishes she could feel nothing of him at all.

“We’re done here,” he says firmly. “You clearly can’t continue. You’re shivering like a weakling.”

Padme nestles into her awful chair even more, wishing the ground would swallow her whole.

Vader steps towards the chair and reaches towards her arm straps to undo them, but a loud, embarrassing sob from her freezes him in place and he steps away from her abruptly, as if she’s been caught on fire.

He clears his throat and flexes his hands. “Captain Piett will be down shortly to escort you back to your cell. If you decide to-“ He stops. Flexes his hands again and the leather of his gloves creak with the movement. He whirls onto the Stormtroopers and points at them menacingly.

“Ensure the Jedi is escorted back to her cell safely and without notice,” he commands and the troopers salute at him and shout back, “Sir!”

He opens the door and stalks out into the hallway.

Neither Vader nor Padme spare each other looks as he leaves.

Eventually, the captain comes to retrieve her as Vader promised.

He’s surprisingly gentle as he undoes her restraints, and when it is time for her to stand up, her legs shake so much that he orders one of the troopers to carry her.

Cain approaches her readily and scoops her up into his arms easily. Tomorrow she will allow herself to cringe in embarrassment over how weak and fragile she looked in front of Vader and the troopers, but right now, all she can muster up is the desire to sink into a touch that is not lethal and cry into his shoulder. He doesn’t stop her.

When they enter her cell, Cain gently deposits her onto her metal slab, and she immediately curls into a fetal position.

For what seems like the first time in her life, she wishes for the tender, loving touch of a mother’s hand. Maybe that could stop the almost paralyzing fear that still runs cold in her veins.

The captain shuts the cell door behind him softly, but Padme doesn’t hear it. She’s already asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was supposed to end differently, but I think I prefer the direction I took. I'm sorry if it was a bit much for some of you, and I hope that you will like this update regardless. Also, since I have encountered this problem on my other stories, I think I'll just address this: Padme's panic attack in this chapter is not a sign of weakness. I have explicitly written in previous chapters that she is terrified of Vader and is made uncomfortable by his proximity. In this chapter, he implicitly threatens her, grabs her and physically hurts her to the point of pain, and accuses her of being apart of an organization that she had just learned about from him. Simply, put she is overwhelmed and traumatized. Thank you for reading.


	9. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Vader has some murderous, graphic thoughts that border on something uncomfortably sexual. I was uncomfortable writing it. I'm sure some of you will be uncomfortable reading it. Read at your own risk.

_Peace is a lie, there is only passion.  
_

_Through passion, I gain strength.  
_

_Through strength, I gain power.  
_

_Through power, I gain victory.  
_

_Through victory, my chains are broken.  
_

_The Force shall free me._

_\- The Sith Code_

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Vader stomps from the torture room and heads towards the western wing of his base, his long legs striding quickly past the empty rooms in the isolated hallway.

Within moments he reaches his Spartan quarters and slams the door open, the steel banging against the wall. The sound reaches only him.

He tears off the stifling layers of his Sith robes, almost envying the girl of her unrestrictive prisoner’s wardrobe and unhooded face. Even the Jedi robes of hers he had stored away looked much more comfortable than the veritable uniform he was required to wear.

Vader throws his cloak and outer robe onto his bed, and allows himself to slump into a leather chair he drags from the corner of his room. He sighs heavily and runs a gloved hand through the dark blond of his hair, hissing in frustration as his thoughts begin to overwhelm him.

_Get away!_

Force. He needs a drink. For a brief second, he almost wishes that he had taken Sidious up on his offer for that goblet of wine earlier, but knowing his master, it might’ve been poisoned and Vader would’ve been subjected to another one of Sidious’s “lessons.”

And besides, Vader has never been necessarily fond of sweet wines.

Measured, clanking footsteps reach his door, and the golden, expressionless face of his oldest droid pops in through the opening. “You have called me, Master?” Threepio’s chirpy and yet strangely academic voice rings out.

Vader spares an irritated look towards the golden droid and turns his face away, resting his sharp jaw upon his hand.

“I didn’t,” he replies snappishly.

“Then perhaps your banging about has summoned me?” Threepio replies almost sarcastically, as if drawing on his creator’s foul mood. “Is there anything you require of me, Master?”

Vader sends C3PO a scathing glare, slightly annoyed at how it doesn’t seem to affect him at all as he moves around, straightening up Vader’s room and hanging his abandoned cloak and robe.

“Don’t make me dismantle you,” he threatens tonelessly, although they both know he’s being facetious.

“That’s the 1,900,534,998th time you’ve said that to me, Master,” Threepio remarks matter-of-factly, and the familiarity of the exchange sets Vader’s nerves on edge. He needs to be alone right now, and his old droid only makes uncomfortable memories and feelings rise to the surface.

“Get me a drink,” he orders, and before Threepio can reply, Vader says, “The Corellian whisky.”

Threepio folds down a rumpled side of the comforter and nods in a stiff, full body movement. “Of course, Master.”

He clanks out of the room after that and Vader briefly considers _actually_ dismantling him once and for all, just to prove that he can do it, before dismissing the thought entirely.

It wouldn’t do to get rid of Threepio. He was too useful.

Vader turns and brings his chair closer to a large desk placed at the side of his room and rests his head upon the palms of his hands. His calluses scratch at his forehead, and he can only welcome the slightly uncomfortable sensation. It distracts him.

He needs to be distracted.

_Get away!_

Vader growls and grabs fistfuls of his hair.

It was her voice. It had to be her voice. She had spoken, had screamed in terror, and yet he was the only one that heard.

Vader scrubs at his forehead again. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s confused; he’s more puzzled and discomfited than he’s ever been in his entire life.

Of course, he’s not an idiot, despite what his master may imply. Sure he didn’t have a knack for politics, but that resulted more from a disdain and a disinterest in the field rather than an actual inability to understand it.

He knew that those strange, petrified flashes that fluttered through his chest, and those grand swells of hatred that swirled in his abdomen were not actually his emotions. They were the girl’s. He knew that. He had felt her unique Force signature two years ago as she fled from the temple into her _Starfighter_. He had used it to track her down; and when he had encountered her again on Corellia, he had felt the strange energy that thrummed between them.

It had exhilarated him. Fascinated him, almost. And yet, he had also understood that they were both talented Force users, and sometimes those strange connections would form only to fade away as the individuals became accustomed to each other’s signatures.

So far it had not been that way with the Jedi, but it had also been only a few weeks, and although the strength of the connection had persisted, it had not grown. It stayed stagnant.

Until now.

Vader has never seen or felt the intensity of such a connection.

It was common for masters and apprentices to form fledgling Force-connections as their relationship strengthened and their years together had grown longer. He had such a connection with Sidious, and he was sure the girl had formed one similar with her own master, if a slightly more amiable one, as Jedi and their padawans were known to become close despite their non-attachment rule.

Vader almost scoffs at the audacity of it and smirks. _Hypocrites._

But still, in his twenty-three years of living and training, Vader has never formed such an intense, instantaneous connection with another person; much less, a _Jedi-_ the Sith’s natural enemy.

And stranger yet, he has never seen or heard of one in which telepathic communication was effortless and done without the aid of intense meditation.

It was so strange, so unfamiliar to him. He had no idea what it was.

Unless-

Vader jerks up in his seat, his eyes widening to the point where it almost strains his lids. He hurriedly gets up from his seat and runs to his large, mostly unused bookcase, and scours the different volumes.

Within moments, he finds his desired book and opens it, flipping quickly through the introduction and into the actual content of the pages.

He finds the specific chapter and skims the page, his intense gaze skittering to a stop as he reads a section of the book over and over, his lips moving intently and quickly.

Once he is satisfied, Vader takes a slight step back and drops the book onto the floor where it lays open.

He wants to kick it, slash it, burn it to pieces and the girl with it.

“The witch,” he hisses murderously, his hands itching to draw his saber and cut a smile into her delicate throat. He hates her. He hates her. _HehatesherHehatesherHehatesher-_

Somehow she did this. Somehow she’s stronger than they all thought and she pulled this cruel trick and has left him bereft of anything that his truly his own now. It must be some trick by the Rebel Alliance; use the girl as bait to draw him near and have her use some strange, unknown Force ability to force a connection and discover the secrets of the Empire to take them down.

Vader sneers, his mind going half mad with the possibilities that would break him down. His hands clench so tightly that his knuckles strain with the pressure.

He will _not_ be taken advantage of; to be made the fool!

At this rate, if their connection grows any stronger, she’ll break down his mental defenses and tear through the chains he’s locked onto his greatest secret; the deepest parts of his shame.

He will kill her. He’s going to kill her.

Vader storms to where Threepio placed his robe and throws it over his broad shoulders, his cloak following soon after.

He’s practically sprinting past Threepio just as the droid enters the room with his desired whisky and a crystal glass. Vader ignores him, almost barreling him over as he strides past, a thunderous look etched across his face.

Threepio yelps and steps back as his master stomps past him, a single-minded resolution apparent in the strong, determined lines of his shoulders.

Threepio sighs almost sadly as he watches him go.

“Oh, dear,” he tsks as he moves into the now messy room.

“Master Ani has always been so cluttered,” he huffs stuffily as he neatly arranges different designs of some complex looking machinery into a single stack. He places them down next to the whisky and pushes in the abandoned leather chair.

Threepio moves further into the room and bends down to pick up discarded black robes and leather doublets before pausing for a moment at the sight of a large, dark grey book on the floor.

The droid momentarily deposits the laundry onto Vader’s bed and tilts his head slightly to peer at the book that had apparently captured his master’s interest.

He can’t help but find himself become the slightest bit excited. After all, it wasn’t very often that his creator decided to read for leisure, since Vader usually watched pod races and designed machinery in his spare time.

Well, on the rare occasions that he had any.

“Force-bonds,” Threepio reads quietly, before swooping down to retrieve the book and place it neatly back into its tiny cubby.

“Now what will I make for dinner?” Threepio mutters to himself as he silently goes over dishes that he knows Master Ani enjoys.

“Perhaps a stew…” he says and then laughs. “Yes! I shall make a stew!” He exclaims excitedly, the door shutting quietly behind him, leaving the room sterile and empty once again.

 

* * *

 

 

The Sith Lord storms menacingly down the hallway, personnel scattering away like rats on a sinking ship as he passes them.

He can sense the fear that wafts off of them in heavy, exhilarating doses. He can taste it. He can feel it on his tongue. It strengthens him, and feeds the dark, murderous dragon that always dwells within his chest.

He imagines the girl’s small, supple form lying on her metal slab; her eyes wide with fear and full lips parted in a frightened scream. He can see his red lightsaber hover close to the porcelain line of her throat, just close enough to prickle dangerously at her skin. He can imagine the sight of her chest, skittering with frantic, panicked breaths; can feel her delicate hands pressing onto his dark robes as she attempts to push him away.

He will back her onto the slab and watch her wide brown eyes beg and plead for her life silently. He will trace the contours of her slight neck with his hand and _push-_

He will choke her and leave her thrashing. He will grab her and force her so close onto his chest that he will feel the frantic, songbird flutterings of her heart so acutely that he will wonder if it his own.

He will kill her. He hates her. Damn what his master says. A traitor’s death is a traitor’s death, no matter who they are.

Before he’s fully aware of it, he’s bursting into the fluorescently lit hall and practically sprints towards the girl’s cell.

A sinister smile curls at his lips and his gut feels hot and heavy. He feels good. Stronger. And the hesitant glances from the guardsmen around him only fuel his anticipation.

Her signature grows nearer; a bright, glowing beacon that burns his own dark abyss of a signature, and even though it stings him, the collision of them both feels like something riding on the back of pleasure.

He loves it.

He hates her.

“Lord Vader?” Captain Piett’s voice interrupts his heady train of thought, and the man in question swivels his head down to glare with hellish eyes at his subordinate.

Piett starts at his foul mood, and Vader feeds off of the fear that radiates from him.

“Where is the girl?” He demands sharply, and the captain must somehow sense the malice that wafts off of his commander, because he glances around hesitantly.

Vader grows furious at this. He steps closer menacingly, his gloved hand curved in what is now a familiar motion. _“Where is she?”_ He hisses.

Piett glances up fitfully, his fingers trembling and his tongue heavy. Vader smirks at his obvious fear.

“I-I-In her cell as you requested, my lord!” Captain Piett answers, his voice wavering, but resolute.

Vader feels a small burst of pride at his subordinate’s attempt to save-face in spite of his obvious terror, and so he simply nods curtly.

“Take me there,” he demands, and the captain salutes him and beckons a small group of armed troopers.

Vader smirks again and strides forward with his men until they reach the Jedi’s cell, where he enters a code to open the door.

It slides open and through the doorway, he can see the Jedi standing still in the middle of the cell, her hands fisted and her expression shaken, but determined.

Vader’s breath grows heavy in his chest at the sight, almost panting at the possibilities that run through his mind.

He’s going to grab her; to squeeze her; to push her and force her down and-

Unconsciously, he had walked forward, taking slow, predatory steps into her room. He can feel the eyes of his men burning into his back, curious as to what he’s going to do.

But more than that, he can feel the Jedi’s panic and fear churn unrelentingly in his chest; so strongly that it can be his own. He can taste her fear.

Her.

He tastes her.

His gut pulses, the sensation heady and hot and his alone.

“W-What are you doing here?” The girl asks, backing up slowly, her hands held faintly outstretched, as if trying to tame a wild animal.

Vader laughs and her shiver races down his spine, spurring him on.

“You mean you don’t know, little one? You don’t have a damn clue do you?” He says, his voice on the edge of manic.

The Jedi’s delicate brows furrow slightly, her full lips pursing. She is confused.

The bitch.

The witch.

“Please, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I swear I don’t know anything about the Rebellion. I didn’t even know there was one!” She says emphatically. Her small hand comes up and grips the starchy neckline of her dress, so close, just on the edge of where Vader’s hand longs to be.

He steps forward and she steps back.

He almost laughs in disbelief. “You don’t know what I’m talking about?” He asks incredulously.

He gestures between them with a gloved hand. “You did this,” he hisses.

The Jedi rears her head back in confusion, when suddenly something seems to click in her mind and she understands what he’s referring to.

She shakes her head and tilts her chin up stubbornly, her actions strangely regal. “I didn’t do that. I don’t even know what it is!”

Something about what she says rings true in Vader’s mind but he ignores it, ignores her, and lunges at her.

The Jedi yelps in fear as he grips her arms and slams her back against the wall of her cell, shoving her so roughly that her head snaps forward and she groans in pain.

The men behind him start forward, but Vader freezes them with the Force, keeping his eyes on the traitorous girl in front of him.

Her earlier debilitating fear must’ve abated itself, because instead of cringing away from him like she had done in the torture room, the Jedi meets his gaze head on, her eyes panicked but blazing with rage and hatred.

Her wrath mixes with his own and it sets him on fire. It sets her on fire.

He grabs the front of her prisoner’s garb and lifts her bodily, laughing cruelly at her as she attempts to kick at his legs. He uses his hips to press her farther into the wall, and leans in closer, moving his hand upwards to press his palm against her throat, laughing as she snarls and bites at him like a rabid animal.

“You’re a monster,” she spits, her eyes alight with fury. “You’re a soulless, depraved monster and I hope you die. I hope you fucking die! You killed my people! You destroyed everything!”

Vader simply presses his palm in harsher and delights in the sensation of her throat muscle flexing against his gloved hand.

It exhilarates him.

He loves it. He hates her.

The Jedi kicks her legs up and plants her feet against the cage of his thighs. One foot slips and she twines it around his knee, unintentionally pressing herself closer.

Vader plants his other hand beside her head and shoves at her with the wall of his chest, grinning at her hiss of pain. She attempts to slam her forehead into his own in retaliation, but his tightening grip around her neck freezes her in place.

He pushes against her again, hard enough that her other foot falls off of his thigh and hurriedly wraps itself around his hip, dragging him closer into the circle of her own hips. This time when he shoves, the heat of her presses against him and he stills and she stills and the Force sings around them. It curls through his fingers and around her hair and electrifies their skin.

He is him and she is her and the Force is them both and it twines them closer and closer still, until neither of them can tell where Padme begins and Vader ends.

And then the flood doors burst open and the cacophony of their thoughts start:

_Oh,Force!Oh,Force!Oh,Force-_

_HateherHateherHatehersogood-_

Vader rips himself away and Pad- _the Jedi_ tumbles onto the floor, her legs slipping from the cradle of his hips.

The Force users both turn to look at each other, their respective gazes wide and confused, and even still- even still, he can’t help but notice the flush that rises high on her cheeks and colors the skin above her chest.

He hates her.

And they are bonded.

Vader stabs a finger menacingly in her direction and relishes in the flinch she makes, before he turns away and storms past the baffled group of men at the entry to the cell.

One Stormtrooper rushes past and assists the Jedi upwards, holding her by her upper arms, and the dragon in Vader’s chest roars something unintelligible but he pretends that it is his disdain for her.

The captain rushes to catch up with him and jogs behind Vader’s swift strides. Without turning back to look, he snaps, “Move the Jedi to my personal wing, and don’t breathe a word of it to the Emperor.”

Captain Piett rears his head back in shock, but schools his expression quickly. He nods once. “Of course, Sir.”

Vader reaches his wing and locks himself into his room, unwilling to even look at Threepio right now.

He throws his stifling robes onto his bed, creating a massive pile of laundry his droid will have to do later, and leaves himself wearing only a thin black shirt and pants.

He throws himself back onto his leather chair and moves to do something to distract himself from the tempest of thoughts circling though his mind, when he feels something jerk against his stomach.

He looks down and sneers.

He’s hard.

Vader groans and leans his head back against the chair in annoyance. Not only does he discover something that could potentially destroy both him and the Jedi, but he’s turned on.

For the Force’s sake he hates her. He hates her. He hates her. He hates-

He remembers her; pressed tightly against the wall of his chest, eyes ablaze with fury, mouth red and slack as he shoves her-

Vader fumbles with his belt and forces his hand down his pants.

When he releases into his fingers, it’s her mouth he sees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Force bonds! I've been really dragging this out haven't I? Also, my portrayal of Force bonds will be different than the one shown between Kylo and Rey in TLJ. And as a gift to the readers, Vader masturbation! Admittedly writing that part in made me kinda giddy.
> 
> P.S. this fanfic has a playlist remember?  
> <
> 
>  
> 
> [love of the most exquisite kind ](https://open.spotify.com/user/taygonza12/playlist/1Jq5350IvccW2eNvZ1paV8?si=S1O1qPRWTFyrEZJ7S7ngng)


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